


Life Goes On

by Llywela



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (1963)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-05
Updated: 2012-09-05
Packaged: 2017-11-13 15:33:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 49,532
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/505012
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Llywela/pseuds/Llywela
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Case-file. The Doctor has left UNIT…but life goes on without him and so do extra-terrestrial incursions. When mysterious fissures appear and unidentified aliens attack, Liz Shaw finds herself drawn back to UNIT after an absence of several years, while a newly returned Sarah Jane Smith is wondering what the future holds for her, now that her dearest friend has left her behind.<br/>It's a bit of a slow burn but stick with it, the action kicks in soon enough!</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> UNIT and all characters connected therein belong to the BBC. I have borrowed them for this story and am making no profit from this  
> With thanks to Sue

UNITUNITUNIT

 "Now really, Brigadier. Once was an imposition. Twice is adding insult to injury!"

 Professor Elizabeth Shaw stormed into Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart's office ahead of her escort, bristling with indignation from the tips of her toes to the ends of her hair, the fiery colour of which was a perfect match for her current mood. How dare he do this to her again? Bad enough that she'd been dragged away from her research at Cambridge by the high-handed tactics of UNIT the one time, but that it had now happened again, for no good reason that she could see, really was beyond the pale. He knew her feelings on the subject. She'd made them quite clear the first time they met and had expressed similar sentiments again when they finally parted company. Yet he had blithely disregarded both her wishes and her career to have her brought back here at a moment's notice, again.

 Sat at his desk reading through some paperwork, the Brigadier glanced up. "Ah, Miss Shaw," he said, as calmly as if she had merely bid him good morning, nodding at her escort that all was well and he could leave them. "Thank you for coming at such short notice."

 She'd almost forgotten that about him, that utter unflappability. It was what made him the ideal man for his job, his phlegmatic nature standing him in good stead when faced with the bizarre and unexplainable, which was UNIT's remit. It was also what made him so very maddening to deal with. He hadn't changed a bit in the years since they'd last met. That much older now, of course, he must be pushing 50 these days, his smooth dark hair slowly giving way to salt-and-pepper, but otherwise just the same as he'd always been: the perfect gentleman officer, dashing and dapper, right down to the little moustache that looked almost as if it had been pencilled on, it was so neat.

 "I wasn't exactly given much say in the matter," Liz snapped, and he had the grace to look slightly chagrined.

 "Ah, yes. Yes, I do apologise for all that – you know how it is."

 Yes, she did know how it was. That was part of the reason she'd left UNIT and not looked back, several years earlier. It was also part of the reason she'd not wanted to work there in the first place. She'd been requisitioned like a piece of equipment, whether she liked it or not, and had resented it every bit as fiercely then as she did now.

 "Just what exactly is the meaning of all this, Brigadier?" she demanded. "Why have you brought me back here, you don't need me –"

 "Oh, but we do, Miss Shaw," he interrupted. "We do. We find ourselves very much in need of a scientist of your standing and all-round expertise –"

 "Oh, but you don't," she insisted, interrupting in turn. "You don't need me – you never did. The Doctor –"

 "The Doctor is no longer here," said the Brigadier, and this matter-of-fact statement stopped her dead in her tracks.

 "No longer here?" she echoed in surprise, her outrage forgotten for the moment.

 The Doctor was the reason she'd stayed with UNIT as long as she had…and he was also the reason she'd left. That enigmatic, eccentric genius had been a revelation to work with; she could easily have spent her entire career at his side and still learned no more than a fraction of what he knew. Part of her had wanted to, had wanted nothing more than to stay with him and soak up as much of that knowledge as she could, but her inner student had been overruled by her ambition, which had pointed out that in the shadows of even such a genius was the very last place she should be standing. She'd invested too much in her career to let it flounder now. Working with the Doctor had been exhilarating and invigorating – yet she had never in her life felt more redundant. She was a scientist. She'd spent years painstakingly building up her reputation and standing. She wasn't about throw it all away simply to stand at the Doctor's side handing him test tubes and admiring his brilliance. So she'd left and she hadn't looked back, her research too all-consuming for any regrets.

 And now here she was again.

 "That's right," the Brigadier nodded. "The Doctor is no longer here – only he knows where he now is – and so we find ourselves in rather pressing need of an alternate scientific advisor to aid us in an ongoing investigation."

 "But why should that have to be me?" demanded Liz, setting aside the mysterious issue of the Doctor's departure from UNIT for the time being. "There must be dozens of scientists every bit as qualified for the job."

 There weren't. She already knew that. Oh, there were plenty of scientists out there, good ones – brilliant ones – but few with the breadth of expertise that she could boast. The majority of her fellows tended toward a much narrower field of study.

 "Miss Shaw, we discussed your qualifications for the post in some detail the first time we met. Since then you have only added to them. You now also have an additional qualification, unique in your field – you know us. You've worked with UNIT before, you know what our work entails, and that experience would be invaluable to us in this investigation."

 'Would be' rather than 'will be'. Liz mentally thanked him for that small concession even as she fumed over being backed into such a corner. He wasn't presenting her cooperation as a foregone conclusion, but he might as well. She couldn't refuse and he knew it, and the fact that she knew what UNIT's work entailed was a large part of the reason why. If they'd requested her help so urgently – and forcefully – it had to be a matter of national security, at the very least, but also…knowing UNIT's work as she did, she couldn't help but be intrigued to know just what the problem was.

 Her curiosity and her desire to turn around and walk away again warred for a moment longer, before she gave in to the inevitable and reluctantly asked him to tell her about the investigation. It couldn't hurt to find out more, she told herself. Asking the question didn't mean she couldn't still walk away at any time.

 She almost believed it, too. Almost.

 "Well, it's rather an odd one," the Brigadier began, and Liz found herself chuckling in spite of it all.

 "Aren't they all?"

 He rolled his eyes. "Well, quite. However, this one has us particularly puzzled. Over the last few days we've been receiving some rather odd accounts – some strange…well, anomalies, I suppose you might call them…"

 "That's not very precise."

 "It's rather difficult to be precise. Eye witness reports talk of these strange…fissures opening up: in walls, in floors – mid-air, even. Then they disappear again, usually within a matter of minutes. We've yet to see one for ourselves to be able to study them."

 "That's just hearsay, Brigadier," Liz scoffed. She'd expected something far more substantial, given the peremptory summons she'd received.

 "There are also reports of people disappearing into these fissures," he grimly replied. "Where they end up is impossible to say, but certainly none of them have been seen again. And now something appears to have come through in the other direction – and that's where we'd like you to begin. It's in our sick bay, at present, being examined by our medical officer."

 "Some _thing_ , you say," Liz carefully repeated. "Not some _one_."

 "That's right." The Brigadier smiled his most charming smile at her. "Shall I show you?"

 Oh, he was impossible. He had her hooked and he knew it and she was furious about it because this was exactly what he'd done the first time they met: presented her with a scientific conundrum too intriguing to resist. Now she'd let him do it to her all over again, but couldn't argue about it precisely because she _was_ hooked. She wanted to know what they'd found more than she wanted to walk away.

 Well, there was nothing for it, then, but to go along with him and find out just what was going on here – and what had come through that fissure.

 UNITUNITUNIT

 "Professor Shaw, Surgeon-Lieutenant Sullivan, our chief medical officer. He'll bring you up to speed."

 Introductions thus concluded, the Brigadier left the sick bay, closing the door behind him and leaving Liz alone with the young medical officer. He was a Naval doctor, judging both by his rank and the uniform visible beneath his unbuttoned lab coat, in his early 30s, tall and square-jawed with a lean, angular face, thick curly hair cut short with deep sideburns and a slightly crooked nose that suggested he'd perhaps been a bit of a rugby player in his youth.

 "How much has the Brigadier told you, Professor Shaw?" he asked in the crisp, clipped tones of a public schoolboy, greeting her with a firm handshake.

 "Very little," she admitted, rolling her eyes. "Something about something that came through some kind of fissure."

 Put like that, it sounded vaguer than vague, but Sullivan smiled and nodded. "That's the one. It's over here."

 'It' being the operative word, as it turned out. It was lying on an examination table toward the back of the room: a stocky humanoid figure clad in some kind of armour, including an ornate helmet that concealed the face. A humanoid figure that definitely wasn't human. An alien of some kind.

 That was something she'd deliberately not allowed herself to remember about working for UNIT: the thrill that ran through one at the first sight of something like this.

 "Wouldn't it be easier to examine if you removed the armour?" Liz enquired, circling the table to get a good look at the alien. What little skin was visible was a strange blue-grey in colour, with an odd texture that was almost reptilian, and there were spurs that appeared to be made of bone jutting out of the sides of its forearms, fitting neatly through holes in the gauntlets that had clearly been designed for that purpose. It was fascinating, even before taking into account the various mechanical and technical devices that appeared to be built into its body armour, whose purpose she could only begin to guess at.

 Sullivan cast a mildly exasperated look in her direction; this was evidently a question that had come up before. "It would," he agreed. "If we could get it off."

 "You mean you can't remove it?" She leaned in to take a closer look – and gasped in surprise. She'd assumed, somehow, that the creature must be dead…but realised, upon getting that bit closer, that it was breathing. "It's still alive?"

 "Yes, and I'd quite like to keep it that way, if at all possible, which would be rather easier to achieve if I knew anything at all about it," Sullivan explained. "But as you can see, the armour makes a full examination all but impossible. It doesn't appear to have any life support function, but it's quite securely attached. There are what appear to be fasteners here and here," he pointed them out, "but they give quite a nasty shock if you try to release them, and we haven't yet managed to bypass that defence system."

 "When was it found?"

 "Early this morning."

 "And has it been unconscious the whole time?" she asked, regarding the alien with fascination.

 He nodded. "Hasn't shown the slightest sign of stirring – it seems to be well and truly out for the count. I'm a bit concerned that might indicate head trauma of some kind, but the helmet is impervious to x-ray, and since it can't be removed…"

 "Diagnosis is a little tricky. I see." She was eager to get her hands on the creature and start examining it herself, various possible options already running through her mind, but first she needed to find out more about what had already been tried, to avoid duplication of effort. "Do you have the full case file to hand? If I'm to be of any help with this investigation, I should probably start with that." And she realised as she said it that she had begun to take for granted that she was part of the case now, all thoughts of walking away all but forgotten. It was a completely unknown alien that came complete with absolutely unknown technology – how could she walk away from a puzzle like that?

 Sullivan handed her the file and she found a chair over in one corner that was almost comfortable to sit and read it, committing the details to memory. Then before she got started with the more hands-on work, she was also shown the rest of the investigation – eye witness accounts of the fissures, maps and wall charts plotting the locations of the various incidents, the results of forensic examinations conducted at each site, and reports from UNIT's tracking station, where technicians had identified strange sort of radio waves, or at least radio interference, in the vicinity of each fissure.

 It was Benton who showed her around the incident room: tall, solid, dependable Benton, who'd been a mere corporal the last time they met and had now reached the giddy heights of Regimental Sergeant-Major, but was otherwise utterly unchanged.

 "It's good to have you back, Miss," he told her with a smile.

 Back in sick bay, Liz set her mind to the task at hand. "Could I take a look at the blood samples, Dr Sullivan?" she asked.

 "Call me Harry, please," he said with a rueful little smile, scrubbing a hand through his curls. "Whenever anyone around here calls me 'doctor', I rather expect to turn around and see the other chap, even now."

 Liz chuckled at that. "You mean _the_ Doctor, the one who likes to call himself 'John Smith'?"

 "That's the name on his file. It's not who he is, though."

 "You knew him, then?"

 "Oh yes – remarkable chap."

 He certainly was that, and his absence appeared to be the only thing about UNIT that had changed since Liz was last there. "Do you know where he is now?" she asked, wondering if one of the space programmes overseas, perhaps, might have appealed to his spirit of scientific adventure.

 "Oh, half way around the universe by now, I should think," Harry replied with a shrug. "I couldn't begin to guess."

 Halfway around the universe…she should have realised. It simply hadn't occurred to her, when she heard of the Doctor's departure from UNIT, that he might also have departed from the planet. It should have, of course – his alien origins certainly weren't in question and she'd always known how much he wanted to resume his travels among the stars…but he'd been so well and truly trapped here on Earth when she'd known him that she'd somehow taken it completely for granted that he still would be.

 "He used to talk about leaving all the time," she recalled. "He kept telling me about his plans to get that old box of his working again. It could take him anywhere and any when, he used to say. But it was just an old police box. It seemed too absurd for words."

 It was more than just an old police box, of course, and Liz knew that; she'd seen inside it, after all. But he'd never even seemed to get close to repairing it while she'd known him, and not for want of trying. It had seemed an utterly futile project.

 "That's what I thought, at first," said Harry. "But there's a lot more to that old box of his than meets the eye. And the blood samples are over here, Professor."

 Right: the business at hand. The past could wait.

 "It's Liz," she told him. "Thank you."

 UNITUNITUNIT

 "Well, Miss Shaw. How are you getting on?" the Brigadier asked as he returned to sick bay for the umpteenth time to check up on progress. Anyone would think he had nothing better to do.

 "Splendidly," Liz tersely replied, keeping her eyes focused on her work in the hope that he might take the hint and leave her in peace, since she was trying to concentrate.

 The Brigadier never had been very good at picking up hints, however, and it evidently wasn't a skill he'd managed to acquire during the years since they'd last met. "Excellent. You have some progress to report, then?"

 "Not yet," she crisply replied, keeping her tone brisk and to the point in hopes of discouraging further extraneous conversation.

 It wasn't strictly true – 'progress' was, after all, something of a subjective term and depended heavily on what one was or wasn't expecting to learn from any given investigation. Still, however one looked at it, she'd be making a lot more progress if she weren't interrupted quite so often, especially since in scientific terms they had barely even begun, after only a few scant hours of study.

 The Brigadier began to pace around the impromptu laboratory that had been set up for her in a corner of sick bay, swagger stick tucked under an arm. "We need to find out as much as we can about this creature," he rather fretfully reminded her, as if he thought she might have forgotten. "What is it, where did it come from, what's it doing here – are there any more of them? Haven't you learned anything about it yet? Sullivan?" He turned to include the medical officer in the discussion and Harry glanced up and wandered over to join them.

 "On the contrary, sir," he cheerfully replied. "We've learned quite a bit."

 It was true, they had. The haematology, for instance, was absolutely fascinating, so different from any blood type that might be encountered on Earth, either human or animal. Harry had already made some headway in identifying the constituent cells before Liz joined him and together they had made great strides in furthering that work, drawing parallels with Earth blood types in hopes of gaining some understanding of the alien's physiology and thus diagnosing what was wrong with it, although a lot of that work was little more than guesswork at this stage, unavoidably so. They'd at least learned enough that they could keep the creature hydrated and comfortable for the time being and be reasonably certain they wouldn't accidentally kill it in the process. Equally, the metallurgical analyses Liz was conducting on the alien's strange, mechanised armour had taught her a fair amount about its composition, although very little as yet about the technology built into it, still less where it might have come from beyond the fact that it was clearly not of Earth origin. None of that was what the Brigadier really wanted to hear, however, she knew.

 "Just not the answers to your specific questions," she said as a rider to Harry's statement. "Not yet."

 The Brigadier frowned. "There could be a whole army of these creatures out there, you know. If they're planning an invasion of some kind, I'd prefer to know about it sooner rather than later."

 "Yes, I'm sure you would."

 He always had tended to assume hostility on the part of any visiting aliens that passed Earth's way, as Liz recalled – and in fairness, he'd often been right in that assumption, although not always. He had to assume the worst, she supposed. It was his job. Hers, however, was to remain objective, and Harry's was to ensure the wellbeing of his patient, alien or otherwise. Neither one of them was going to be able to give the Brigadier the assurances he was looking for, certainly not at this early stage. And if he was going to keep on interrupting their work like this, they never would.

 "Brigadier, if you want us to learn anything useful about this creature, perhaps it might help if you allowed us to get on with our work, without all these interruptions," she brusquely suggested. "We'll keep you informed of any progress, don't you worry about that."

 He was unhappy about being given the brush off in this way, that much was blindingly apparent, but he seemed to take the point. "See that you do," he curtly instructed, turning on his heel and marching smartly out of the room.

 Liz turned back to her work – and realised that she had completely lost her place and would have to start the sequence all over again. "Oh, that man!" she burst out in exasperation, and saw Harry lift his eyebrows and give a little shrug. "You're going to defend him, I suppose," she grumbled before he could say anything.

 "Well, he is only doing his job," Harry mildly pointed out.

 "No, he's getting in the way of me doing mine," Liz snapped. A job she hadn't asked to be recruited for in the first place, moreover, a fact that was harder to forget for as long as she was prevented from getting on with it.

 It wasn't Harry's fault, though, and she'd always prided herself on being fair, so shouldn't really take her frustrations out on him. He'd proved easy enough to work with, so far. He was a bit of a bumbler, perhaps, which wasn't a quality she usually looked for in her lab partners, and he was a typical man, which was to say that he could be rather tactless and thoughtlessly chauvinistic at times without even realising he was doing it – definitely cut from the same public school cloth as the Brigadier. Having said that, however, he was also good at his job, which was a useful start, worked tirelessly both to care for his patient and to assist her where needed, so far as he was able, seemed respectful of her qualifications and experience in spite of his occasional lapses into maleness, and was pleasant company, which was always a help when sharing a workspace. All in all, since she'd been pulled back into the oh-so military environment of UNIT once again, this time without the Doctor's scientific expertise to lean on, she was grateful that she had at least been provided with a work partner who knew one end of a test tube from the other.

 "Come on," she said, adopting a softer tone by way of apology for snapping. "Let's get back to it."

 After all, the sooner she helped UNIT resolve this investigation, the sooner she could return to her real work, back home in Cambridge.

 Afternoon was giving way to evening by the time a breakthrough was finally achieved, and even then it was more by luck than judgement. Having isolated the circuits controlling the armour's defensive mechanisms, Liz had tried rigging up some equipment that would allow her to cycle through microwaves and electrical impulses of varying frequencies in hopes of disabling it, but she was growing weary, after long hours of intense concentration, and her hand slipped on the controls. There was a loud crack and a flash of electricity that threw her to the ground, Harry hurried over to pick her up and check that she was all right – and then when they turned to ensure that their patient was likewise unharmed, they saw that one of the sealed catches on its armour had sprung open.

 "Oh, well done, Liz," Harry enthused. "Could you repeat the procedure?" He frowned dubiously at the tangle of wires, some of which had been disconnected and damaged by the jolt of the short circuit.

 "I'm not sure," Liz admitted.

 "Perhaps a little less dramatically, this time," he added.

 "I'll do my best."

 They were both rather singed and sore by the time the last of those well-defended fasteners had finally shorted out and sprung loose, allowing them to remove the armour, beneath which was a close-fitting body suit made of some kind of synthetic material, and examine their patient properly, at last.

 Medicine took priority over science, at this point, so Liz set the armour aside to continue studying later and focused on the alien, working with Harry to perform a battery of tests, from which they learned a great deal about the creature's physiology and reached the conclusion that it was not physically injured but rather had suffered some kind of neurological trauma – most likely a result of transit through that so-called fissure, whatever it was – which was the cause of its prolonged coma. That being the case, there really wasn't much they could do but continue to monitor its condition and keep it hydrated and as comfortable as possible. If and when it woke up, they would perhaps learn more about where it came from and what it was doing here, but they'd done all they could for the time being.

 It was getting late and the thought of driving all the way back to Cambridge for the night was too exhausting for words, even with a UNIT chauffeur at her disposal. Liz decided instead to avail herself of the sleeping accommodation on site and phoned home to explain that she wouldn't be back tonight.

 No reply. She called the lab instead, three times before Roger finally answered. Absorbed as he was in his own research, he probably wouldn't have even noticed she wasn't home if she hadn't called. Boyfriend and colleague rolled into one – that was one of the things she loved about him, that he was as dedicated to his work as she was, because it meant he understood when she chose to prioritise it.

 "Must be special for you to abandon your research at this stage," he observed.

 "Anna can oversee the experiments in my absence," she assured him, although she was far from convinced that her doctoral student had either the experience or finesse that was really required for taking point on the experiments solo. She was just going to have to manage, and perhaps the responsibility would be good for her.

 This morning she'd have been horrified at the thought of leaving her precious research in Anna's care at such a crucial time. Tonight…she felt strangely calm about it. Her priorities had shifted, almost without her noticing.

 "Will you be away long?" Roger asked.

 "I'm not sure yet. A few days, perhaps."

 "It must be special," he repeated, and Liz thought again about the mysterious alien lying comatose in UNIT's sick bay.

 "Yes," she said. "It is."

 UNITUNITUNIT

 Liz regretted not going home for the night when morning came and she had nothing to change into but the rumpled outfit she'd worn yesterday, since she liked to present a smart, professional image, as a woman of approaching 40 operating in a man's world. She freshened up as best she could and arranged for clean clothes to be sent down from Cambridge before heading for sick bay to begin work for the day, in the absence of any instructions to the contrary.

 Harry was already there, checking over their mysterious alien patient, and while he worked he was chatting to a young woman who was perched on a worktop alongside him, feet dangling. Petite and pretty, she was casually dressed, with sleek dark hair hanging loose around her shoulders. She was also something of a mystery – her presence here, at least. She couldn't be UNIT, non-uniformed as she was, unless she was admin staff, perhaps, but even those tended to be military, as a rule. But if she wasn't UNIT, what was she doing here? There'd been no mention of any other specialists being brought in, and she didn't appear to be working. A girlfriend, perhaps – but how likely was that, given the security of the base and the secrecy of this investigation?

 "Good morning," Liz called, since neither seemed to have noticed her arrival.

 Harry jumped to attention at once. "Oh, hallo there, Liz," he said, while his friend slid off the worktop and smiled politely at her in greeting. "Uh…this is Sarah Jane Smith. Sarah, Professor Liz Shaw."

 "How do you do?" smiled Sarah, holding out a hand, which Liz shook.

 "Miss Smith –"

 "Sarah, please."

 "Sarah. You work here at UNIT as well, do you?"

 "Oh heavens, no," she laughed. "No, I'm a journalist. Freelance."

 "A journalist?" Well, Liz hadn't expected that, and was alarmed – and rather shocked at Harry for allowing the press to have access to this room and its ailing alien occupant, girlfriend or otherwise. How had she made it past security?

 "Oh, but it's all right," Sarah hastily added. "The Brig doesn't mind, he knows I won't print anything untoward."

 "Sarah's been a good friend to UNIT, over the years," Harry explained. "And, of course, she has nothing better to do these days, since she's been back home…" He broke off, chuckling, and ducked away as Sarah smacked his arm.

 "That's nice! See if I bother to say hello next time I'm passing."

 "You'd have to go a long way to be 'just passing' all the way out here, old girl," Harry pointed out, his tone serious but with a mischievous twinkle in his eye, and Sarah poked her tongue out at him.

 "Fine, be like that. I'll go and say good morning to the Brigadier instead, then, see if he's any more welcoming. It was nice to meet you, Professor Shaw."

 "Liz," said Liz with a smile, amused by their antics and wondering again what their relationship was, what this journalist was doing at UNIT, seemingly as comfortable as if she belonged here.

 "See you later, Harry," Sarah added as she left the room, while behind her back, Liz regarded him with raised eyebrows.

 "Girlfriend?" she asked in her driest tone, since that still seemed the most likely explanation, but Harry seemed both genuinely startled and absolutely mortified that she should think such a thing.

 "What? Oh, no! No, Sarah's a friend, and, you see, she's, uh, she was connected to the Doctor, and now she's…uh…" He was frowning as he came stuttering to a halt, looking confused, as if now that he came to think about it, he couldn't actually come up with any official reason for Sarah's presence.

 Connected to the Doctor, eh? How would a freelance journalist be connected to the Doctor and why should that connection allow her access to UNIT headquarters in the middle of a top secret investigation now that he was no longer here? But Harry seemed a bit too flustered about the misunderstanding to be able to explain Sarah's UNIT connections properly; it would probably be easier to ask the woman herself, should she reappear. Liz took pity on him and changed the subject. "Never mind. How's our patient this morning?"

 "Oh, I've got the overnight report here," he told her with visible relief, picking up a file and handing it to her. "It seems rather more responsive than it was, actually – the coma appears to be lightening."

 Liz scanned the report, which meticulously detailed the alien's vitals, as recorded by the duty staff overnight. "So it might actually wake up at some point, then," she noted, wryly adding, "The Brigadier will be pleased – he'll get to interrogate it at last, find out if he should be preparing for battle."

 Harry snorted. "Well, if it is the spearhead of an invasion, they've got a jolly funny way of going about it!"

 "Yes, haven't they just," she dryly agreed.

 Leaving the patient care to the practising physician, she focused her attention for the time being on the alien's armour. Although the catches that had secured it in place were no longer live, there were plenty of other built-in devices to examine, some of which were clearly weapons, while others still remained a total mystery, and she was determined to learn as much as she could about them.

 Sarah drifted back in after a while, bearing a tray of steaming mugs that she'd just taken off a young private out in the hallway, and the news that another of the fissures had opened and then closed again, somewhere out in the wilds – the Brigadier was taking a team out to investigate and would be back with more news later. "And apparently a person came through this time – a human, I mean. Out cold, just like your friend over there. He's been taken to hospital, but the Brig's going to arrange to have him brought here, so you'll need to set up for another patient, Harry," she added.

 "He should have waited for me," said Liz, exasperated – what was the point of him having her brought in to work on the investigation if he was going to leave her out of it? "I might have learned something useful from an examination of the site."

 Setting aside the experiments she was preparing, she hurried out of the room – if she was quick, she might still catch him.

 She didn't. The Brigadier and his forensic team had already gone by the time she found out where they were assembling. She only missed them by a few minutes, but by then was in no mood to have them called back and asked to wait while she put together a kit of field equipment. She'd just have to wait and see if they brought back any evidence this time – from what she'd seen, they hadn't found anything even remotely useful to the enquiry at any of the previous locations, which was why it might have been beneficial if she'd had the chance to examine one herself.

 Still, another fissure at least meant more raw data, which could only aid in the analysis of what they already knew, so she went to get the latest information from the tracking station herself, rather than wait for it to be brought to her.

 When she returned to sick bay, Sarah was perched on the worktop alongside Harry again, feet dangling, talking quietly while he tended to the still comatose alien, with a second examination table already set up for the new patient, whenever he arrived. Liz left them to it and focused on her own work, trying to make sense of what little information they had about the fissures. If only she could see one for herself – not just the location where one had previously been, but the actual fissure itself – she might stand a better chance of understanding what they were and what was causing them, but until and unless they were able to predict where the next one was likely to appear, there didn't seem to be much chance of that. This raw data was all they had to go on, and it wasn't much.

 The Doctor would probably have solved the entire case by now, she tiredly reflected. She'd been brought in to fill the gaping hole he'd left behind, but even as highly qualified and experienced as she was, she knew that she could never take his place, could never be for UNIT what he'd been. It was unlikely that anyone on Earth could.

 Still, all she could do was her best. She might not have the Doctor's genius or depth and breadth of intergalactic knowledge, but she was a scientist, highly trained in multiple disciplines and extremely efficient. If she kept applying herself to the task and was given enough information, she would eventually be able to solve the problem, even if she couldn't guarantee how long it might take. She just needed to keep plugging away at it, and if she failed to work as fast as the Doctor would have done, well, so be it. He had left. She was here and she was currently all UNIT had.

 She didn't realise Sarah had approached until she heard the other woman's voice just behind her. "Is there anything I can do to help?"

 "I'm sorry, what was that?" Liz wrenched her attention away from the figures, which had started to swim before her eyes.

 "Oh, sorry, I didn't mean to disturb you. I just wondered if you needed a hand with anything."

 The data analysis wasn't something anyone could help with, really, certainly not a layman, but Liz was getting nowhere fast with that, so set it aside for now; a break to clear her head would allow her to return to it fresh later. "Not with this, I'm afraid, but you can give me a hand with these samples."

 It was the work of but a moment to explain what to do. Sarah was no scientist but she was quick and efficient and followed instruction well; they quickly settled into a rhythm.

 "I did something like this for the Doctor once or twice," she remarked after a while. "The Brigadier said that you worked with him for a while, when he first came to UNIT."

 "A long time ago now."

 "How long?"

 "Must be…" Liz tried to remember. "Oh, six or seven years, at the very least – maybe closer to eight." She regarded the other woman curiously for a moment, wondering again what her function here was, since she didn't appear to have any formal affiliation with UNIT, still less any role to play in the investigation. "How did you meet him? The Doctor, I mean?"

 Sarah smiled a nostalgic little smile. "Oh, it's a long story," she said, dryly adding, "Or was that just a polite way of asking what I'm doing here?"

 Caught, Liz had to chuckle. "Well, I wouldn't have phrased it quite so bluntly, but I was wondering…well, actually," she admitted, "I did think at first that you and Harry might be…well, you know – involved."

 Sarah burst out laughing. "What, me and Harry? Oh, heavens no. No, Harry's a very dear friend, but he's…well, he's a bit like the brother I never had, really, I suppose – besides, he's seeing someone. Aren't you, Harry?" Eyes dancing with mischief, she raised her voice to call across the lab and Harry glanced up from his work, bemused, and wandered over to see what they were talking about.

 "What's that, old thing?"

 "Harry. I'm not old and I'm not a thing."

 "Sorry. Sarah."

 "You've been going out with that corporal in Stores, haven't you?" she teased. "What's her name again? Helen, isn't it?"

 Harry spluttered. "I say, old girl, I don't see that it's any business of yours," he protested, clearly mortified all over again at having had his private life brought up in the workplace for a second time in one morning.

 "Oh, don't be such a stick-in-the-mud, Harry," Sarah cheerfully retorted. "Of course it's my business – we're friends, aren't we?"

 Harry had gone pink. Muttering that he should get back to work, he escaped to the other side of the lab again, while Sarah burst out giggling.

 "Oh, I really shouldn't tease him like that."

 Liz chuckled. "Why not? It's rather fun!"

 "And so easy. Poor Harry," Sarah grinned, watching as he settled back to his work, assiduously ignoring them now. Then she became serious once more. "You wanted to know what I'm doing here. The truth is, I don't really know, any more. Habit, I suppose." She sighed. "I spent so much time here when the Doctor was around. He needed an assistant and I had access to all the big scoops – some of them were even publishable. We were such good friends…" She looked wistful as her voice trailed off.

 "And then he left," Liz softly finished for her.

 "And then he left. He left _me_. And now…" She snorted. "Now I find myself hanging around annoying Harry instead!"

 Liz smiled. "I don't think he minds very much."

 "He's right, though – don't tell him I said so! But I am at a loose end these days, have been ever since I got back –"

 She broke off at the sound of sudden gunfire from outside, jumping to her feet, wide-eyed, while across the lab Harry cried out, "I say, what's all that?" and hurried over to the window, although he was careful to stand to the side as he cautiously peered out, so as not to present a target to whoever was shooting out there.

 "What is it, can you see?" Liz started across the room, but before she'd reached him, the window he was standing at suddenly exploded inward in a shower of glass and she cried out and jumped back, throwing her arms up to shield her face from the flying shards.

 By the time she looked again, Harry was wrestling with an alien as it clambered in through the window – the same kind of alien as their comatose patient, armour-clad, this one wide awake and very aggressive. Before Liz could do anything to help, it had discharged a weapon in its gauntlet with a crackle and a blaze of light, and Harry crumpled. Somewhere behind her, Liz heard Sarah shout out his name in fear and fury, and quickly called to the other woman to run for help, while snatching up whatever came to hand as a weapon to defend herself with, knowing that she was too far from the door to escape.

 "What do you want?" she fearfully called out as the alien advanced toward her, its face hidden by its helmet so that the only part of its expression she could make out were the eyes, glittering with animosity. The examination table with the comatose alien on it was between them and she warily edged around it, trying not to let the intruder get near, futile though such a gesture was since it was armed and had already demonstrated its willingness to shoot.

 Then a second window smashed and she couldn't quite hold back a yelp of shock, instinctively looked to see that another intruder was entering…and hastily returned her attention to the first just in time to be enveloped by a blinding flash of light…

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> As UNIT regroup after the alien attack, Sarah struggles to find a role in the investigation, while Liz and Harry attempt to escape from their alien captors

 Sarah sprinted down the hallway in search of someone, anyone who could help, expecting those invading aliens to come chasing after her in hot pursuit at any moment. Where was everyone? UNIT headquarters was usually a hotbed of activity at this time of day – they couldn't all have gone off with the Brigadier to investigate this latest incident.

 Liz hadn't followed her out of the room. She'd seen Harry get shot. Why was there no one here to help? The intruders would be after her at any moment and…finally! There was Benton running toward her, with a couple of squaddies at his back. She grabbed him, breathlessly gabbled out her story, and was left trailing in his wake as he charged back down the corridor toward sick bay.

 Following a group of soldiers into what was likely to turn out to be a fire fight probably wasn't the most sensible idea in the world, but Sarah had never been one to worry about things like that so she followed them anyway.

 But there was no fire fight. She reached sick bay to find Benton and his squaddies looking perplexed, and the reason they were looking perplexed was that the room was empty.

 Everyone was gone: Harry, Liz, the comatose alien, the attacking aliens – all of them.

 "But they were here…" Sarah murmured in dismay as Benton ran across the room and jumped out of one of the broken windows. She could hear him shouting to some of the soldiers already out there, snapping out orders and demanding an account of what had happened, and followed him across the room to look out of the window herself, saw that several soldiers seemed to be down, the rest of them charging around looking purposeful but directionless. Then she looked down at the spot where Harry had fallen and saw a few drops of blood amid the broken glass that littered the floor.

 It had all happened so quickly. The investigation had seemed so routine and uneventful and now suddenly it was anything but, which would have been par for the course when the Doctor was around and he'd have loved having a case like this to solve, but the Doctor wasn't here any more and without him…

 "Are you all right, Miss?" someone asked from somewhere behind her. Startled out of her gloomy thoughts, Sarah turned to see one of the squaddies looking concerned. She stared at him for a moment, trying to remember his name. Henderson. That was it. Private Henderson. He was young, skinny and gangly, with sticky-out ears and a cute smile, one of the new batch who'd joined UNIT while she was away. They'd only spoken once or twice.

 Benton came scrambling back in through the window rather than going around to one of the entrances, which saved her from having to reply. "What happened? Where've they gone?" she demanded, spinning back around to face him.

 "I don't know," he admitted, stomping across the room and out through the door again at speed. Sarah hurried after him.

 "They can't have just vanished." But even as she said it, she knew it was possible – she'd seen matter transmission technology with her own eyes, had even used it once or twice. That had been while she was travelling with the Doctor and they'd been way off in the future, but there was no reason to suppose these aliens, whoever they were, might not have something similar.

 Or maybe they'd just had a really fast car waiting outside.

 Benton stopped suddenly and Sarah almost collided with him. "Henderson," he called and the young private hurried forward. "Get Miss Smith a cup of tea." Sarah had her mouth open to argue, indignant, but he firmly continued, "I'll come and talk to you in a minute, Sarah, all right," and then hurried away, and his use of her first name stopped her dead in her tracks. He almost never called her by her first name, even after all the years they'd known each other.

 Of course he was busy. The base had just come under attack, he had wounded men all over the ground outside, the chief medical officer and scientific advisor had both been abducted, and the Brigadier wasn't here to take charge. Of course he had more important things to do than talk to Sarah.

 She'd never felt this useless when the Doctor was here.

 Sarah allowed young Henderson to lead her off to a bare-walled little kitchenette, where he fussed about with kettles and tea bags while she sat at a rickety old table running through the details over and over in her mind. What was this all about? What would the Doctor do if he were here? What should she do?

 She'd only called in to say hello to Harry and see how they were getting on with the latest mystery…and because she'd had nothing better to do today, again – adjusting to life back home was proving harder than she'd expected. Without the Doctor she had no real role to play in the investigation. Even when he was here, her position as his assistant had been strictly informal, but now she didn't even have that, and just because she got along well with the Brigadier and Benton and the rest of them didn't mean they'd want her underfoot without the Doctor here, not now that things were going wrong. Everything had changed and she no longer knew where she fitted.

 But she did know that she couldn't just walk away and leave them to it. Not now that Harry was hurt and had been taken.

 "Try not to worry, Miss Smith. We'll find them." It was Benton, back to talk to her, just as he'd promised.

 "I'm not worried," she lied. "I'm trying to work out what we should do now. Do we know how they got away?"

 "They had some kind of vehicle," said Benton, looking puzzled.

 "A vehicle?" She'd been right about the getaway car, then.

 "Never seen anything like it before," he said, frowning. "I only caught a glimpse. It looked a bit like a hovercraft…only it wasn't. And then it wasn't there anymore."

 Sarah stared at him, confused. "What do you mean, wasn't there anymore?"

 "I mean it disappeared. It was there, zooming away – fast. And then it wasn't there anymore, it just vanished. According to the men on the gate it just appeared out of nowhere, as well."

 "But it can't have…" Sarah's voice trailed off. She'd seen enough to know that stranger things than this were entirely possible, and that there was always an explanation. Denying it wouldn't make it any less real. "But how are we supposed to find them now?"

 "I wish I knew, Miss."

 "And the thing I don't understand is _why_ ," Sarah continued. "I mean, I can understand why they'd want to rescue the other alien, if they thought it was being held prisoner or something – but why would they take Harry and Liz?"

 Benton shrugged. "To be honest, I'm a bit more interested in where than why – where they've gone is what we need to know, if we're going to get them back."

 Sarah shook her head. "The Doctor would want to know _why_ ," she was sure. "He'd say it was the key to unlocking the case."

 "Well, why do most people get snatched?" he asked. He was just humouring her, she could tell, but that didn't matter because it was useful to be able to think out loud at him anyway.

 "Money, power – information," she suggested. "Maybe they're up to something – with those fissures, whatever they are. And they want to know how much we've worked out about it. What _do_ we know about it?"

 "You're asking the wrong man, I'm afraid," Benton wryly replied. "That's what Miss Shaw was working on."

 "And I don't think she'd got very far," Sarah admitted, crestfallen. Of course, the aliens would have taken the one person everyone had hoped would be able to come up with a few answers. "Harry was shot," she added in a small voice, unable to deny her anxiety any longer.

 "A lot of men were shot," Benton told her, his tone reassuring. "They're all just stunned, that's all, not killed. It'll be the same with Dr Sullivan. They wouldn't have taken him otherwise – a dead man's no use to anyone."

 Well, that was one way of looking at it – and it did make Sarah feel a bit better. "Come on," she said. "Let's see if we can make any sense of whatever Liz was working on."

 

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 Sick bay was a hubbub of activity. The broken windows were being boarded up and the broken glass swept off the floor, while Sergeant Bellamy had stepped in as acting medical officer, in Harry's absence, and was bustling around tending to the half dozen or so soldiers who'd been stunned by those alien weapons during the raid. They were all out cold still, showing no signs whatsoever of revival.

 Sarah determinedly did not allow herself to think about Harry, who was presumably also out cold still, wherever he was, and completely at the mercy of the aliens who'd taken him – him and Liz. Tucked away in a quiet corner of the room, she tried instead to make sense of the notes Liz had made.

 "Any joy?" asked Benton, coming up behind her.

 She shook her head, tiredly stretching and rolling her shoulders to ease out a few kinks from sitting hunched over the paperwork. "She might as well have written in Swahili for all the sense I can make of it. When's the Brig due back?"

 "Any minute now."

 "I just wish we had something a bit more positive to tell him," Sarah sighed. "What exactly did the men outside say? What did they see?"

 Benton sat down alongside her. "The men on the gate said they heard a funny noise – a kind of rush, as if a vehicle had just passed, clean over the gate. But there was nothing there."

 "Or there was something there but it was invisible," Sarah suggested. Stranger things had proved true in the past.

 "Well, I suppose," he agreed. "Because the next thing, this hovercraft thing had just appeared out of nowhere, right outside the building, they said. And those aliens jumped out and broke in through the window, shot down anyone who tried to stop them – then they jumped back into the vehicle with Dr Sullivan and Miss Shaw…and then it disappeared again."

 "And no one saw which direction it was heading?"

 "'Fraid not – it was gone so quick, just blinked out of sight."

 "Well, they have to be somewhere, invisible or not. There has to be a connection somewhere." Sarah sighed again, despondent, and waved a hand at Liz's notes. "I just can't see any pattern here – and I don't think Liz could, either."

 "Well," said Benton, "Maybe there is no pattern, then."

 "You mean these fissures, whatever they are, might be completely random?" Sometimes the simplest, most obvious solution was also the likeliest, but… "How would that tie in with the aliens?"

 He shrugged. "I don't know."

 "The one you found came through one of them didn't it – and the others seemed to know where to find it…oh, none of it makes any sense!" She stopped herself before she could add that the Doctor would be able to make sense of it, she was sure, because the Doctor wasn't here, so harping on about whatever he might or might not have been able to do wasn't going to help anyone – it certainly wouldn't help find Harry and Liz.

 "Sir!" A young private whose name Sarah didn't know came running up. "The Brigadier's back, Mr Benton, he's looking for you."

 Benton jumped to and hurried out of the room without another word. Sarah watched him go and then wearily turned back to the stack of paperwork Liz had left behind, documenting her work. "I'll just keep ploughing through this lot, then, shall I?" she muttered.

 

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 "No, he's still unidentified as yet," said the Brigadier as the man from the fissure was brought into sick bay. "Certainly isn't one of the people who've gone missing." He frowned. "I really wanted Sullivan to take a look at him – you'd better tell me again exactly what happened here, Mr Benton."

 Benton looked sheepish. "I'm sorry, sir – they caught us off-guard," he began.

 While Benton went through the saga of the alien attack with the Brigadier, Sarah stood at the bedside of the unconscious man and tried not to get in the way of Sergeant Bellamy as she conscientiously tended to him, looking a bit anxious since although she was a trained medical support officer, she wasn't a qualified doctor and this man had been brought here for proper medical attention, not basic first aid.

 "How is he?" Sarah asked.

 "In a coma, according to these notes," said Bellamy, frowning at the file that had been transferred with the patient from the hospital he'd been taken to earlier. "Seems to be suffering from the same kind of neurological trauma as that alien."

 "And they both came through those fissures," Sarah mused, studying the man, who obviously hadn't been at the hospital long enough to be properly admitted and changed into a gown. His clothes were…well, old fashioned was probably the best way of describing them, all natural fibres and earth colours – breeches with a flap buttoned to the waistband rather than trousers with a fly, and a loose-fitting linen shirt beneath a high-collared waistcoat, the ensemble neatly darned in several places, and completed by a coloured handkerchief tied around the neck in lieu of a tie. And he had sideburns that put even Harry's to shame. "You know, I don't think he's from around here, somehow," she wryly observed.

 "Well, if he ever wakes up," Bellamy shrugged, "Perhaps he can tell us."

 "Let's hope so," Sarah agreed with a wistful little smile.

 "Miss Smith." The Brigadier turned to her. "Mr Benton tells me you've been going over Professor Shaw's notes."

 "Yes, I haven't found anything, though," Sarah despondently told him. "Just…lots and lots of nothing."

 "Well, we'll keep trying," he assured her. "Don't worry – we won't rest until Professor Shaw and Lieutenant Sullivan are found and we've put a stop to all this."

 He sounded so positive, it was impossible not to feel buoyed by his determination. Sarah smiled at him. "Of course," she agreed.

 "Look, sir," Benton interrupted. He pointed across the room to where Sergeant Bellamy was now bustling around the soldiers who'd been stunned in the raid earlier. "They're starting to come round."

 "Harry'll be waking up around about now, then, as well," Sarah quietly noted.

 "Let's hope so, eh," the Brigadier agreed, echoing her own earlier sentiment.

 "I just wish we knew where he was," Sarah murmured.

 

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Liz opened her eyes, feeling groggy and irritable, to find herself staring at a wall. She blinked blearily at the peeling paintwork a few times, trying to remember, through the throbbing in her head, what had happened, and slowly became aware of voices somewhere nearby.

 "…afraid I really don't know, old chap – look, where are –"

 "You have done something to him! What is it? Why does he sleep?"

 "Well, that's what we were trying to find out – he was like that when we found him…"

 That was Harry, sounding every bit as groggy as Liz felt but arguing with someone regardless. Mustering whatever of her wits she could assemble, muzzy as she was, she began to roll over to see what was going on, and gasped as a helmeted alien face was suddenly two inches from her own. "You," it snapped. "You will tell us what you have done to our comrade."

 "What?" She was frustrated by her own slow reactions and wondered, distantly, what form of energy their weapons used to create this knock-out effect.

 "She doesn't know any more than I do, I can assure you," Harry tiredly insisted, somewhere nearby, and the alien turned its attention back to him, swinging away from Liz, who slowly elbowed her way up to something approaching a sitting position and began to take in her surroundings.

 They were in a small, windowless room, empty save for a few shelves here and there, some of them hanging loose from their fittings – a store room of some kind, perhaps, but disused and in poor repair. The door was open, a shaft of light shining through, but she couldn't make out anything beyond it. Harry was nearby, sitting half-slumped against the wall with the alien leaning menacingly over him. He had dried blood on his face and shirt where he'd been caught by flying glass when the window smashed and his brow was furrowed as if his head hurt – which, if hers was anything to go by, it probably did.

 "He appears to have suffered a neurological trauma of some kind, that's as much as I can tell you," he was wearily telling the armour-clad alien. "Perhaps if you told us what you've been doing that might have caused it –"

 "Enough!" the alien snapped. "We do not discuss our plans with you!"

 It stomped out, locking the door behind it, leaving the room dark and gloomy, the only light now coming from a vent just above the door. Liz shivered. This was another aspect of working for UNIT that she'd deliberately not allowed herself to think about since leaving: the danger.

 "Are you all right?" Harry quietly asked.

 She began to nod, automatically, but then thought better of it. Her head was pounding. And there was nothing all right about this situation. "Ask me again later," she wryly replied. "What about you?"

 He offered her a tired smile. "Oh, I'm about as all right as you are. That weapon certainly packed a punch."

 "I'm just glad I didn't trigger it by accident in the lab," she admitted, pushing herself a little more upright to get a better look at their situation, refusing to give in to the fear and despondency she could feel hanging over her. Prisoners they might be but, hangover from that alien weapon aside, they were both awake, alert and able-bodied, which meant they stood at least a halfway decent chance of escaping…if they could only find a way to achieve it. "Do you know where we are?" she asked as Harry began to struggle to his feet, holding onto the wall for support and offering her a hand as she likewise started to pick herself up.

 He shook his head. "'Fraid not. By the time I came round we were already in here, with that chap out there shouting at me. They seem to think we did something to their friend."

 "We were looking after him," Liz protested, indignant.

 "Yes, I did try to explain that," he said, picking bits of glass out of his hair. "But our friend in the helmet doesn't seem convinced."

 Just yesterday morning, Liz wistfully recalled, she'd been tucked away in her lab in Cambridge still, so engrossed in her work that she'd barely even remembered UNIT existed. She sighed. "Do you know, before UNIT came knocking on my door, I'd never once been abducted by aliens – I was perfectly content in the belief that they didn't exist, in fact."

 She'd not been bothered by aliens or alien abduction since leaving UNIT, either – until now. The common denominator wasn't hard to spot. But it was all her own fault, she ruefully reflected. She should have known better than to let herself be lured back into a UNIT investigation. They all ended up like this, somehow, and she'd known that from the start.

 Would anyone have contacted Roger to tell him about her disappearance? A glance at her watch told her that she'd been unconscious for little more than two hours, so possibly not yet. If they could only find a way out of here, perhaps he never need know.

 "Yes, I could say much the same thing." Harry gave the door a good rattle and then took a step back to peer up at the vent. "I suppose someone has to do it, though," he added. "Can't just let them run around taking over the world, willy-nilly – and we can't expect the Doctor to always be here to save the day, now that he's moved on. Do you suppose you could reach that vent if I gave you a boost?"

 "It's worth a try, I suppose," Liz agreed, although she had her doubts about the vent's viability as a potential escape route. It wasn't very big, probably wide enough that she might manage it, at a squeeze, but Harry would never get his shoulders through, and it looked quite securely fastened. It would also be quite a drop down the other side, head first. However it did appear to be their only possible way out.

 It was an uncomfortable manoeuvre for them both, and a fruitless one. There was no budging that vent. Harry looked despondent as he carefully set her down again, and she felt more than a little disheartened herself. It took only a few minutes to check every other square inch of wall in the room. The door was the only way out and it was quite securely locked.

 "I suppose they'll have to come back to deal with us eventually." Liz sat down again. There didn't seem to be much else to do.

 "Well, we'll just have to be ready for them, when they do." Harry sat down alongside her, which probably wasn't the best way to go about that resolution, but Liz didn't bother pointing that out.

 "You know, it still seems strange to think of UNIT without the Doctor," she said instead, because she'd been struck by what Harry had said about not expecting the Doctor to always be around to save the day, a reminder of how odd it had felt to return to UNIT and find him no longer there. They were inextricably linked in her mind: UNIT and the Doctor and the madness that accompanied both. Now that she'd been hauled back to UNIT and was up to her eyes in that madness again, it would have been reassuring to think that the Doctor was still around and able to help. "As much as he talked about wanting to leave, he really seemed set there for life."

 That was only because he'd been trapped on Earth at the time, of course, but even knowing that, she'd still managed to fall into the trap of assuming he would always be there, as if the intervening years would have wrought change for no one but herself.

 "Never really struck me as the settling down type," Harry shrugged. "We were jolly lucky to have him as long as we did, really. I'm sure he'll pop back to visit sometime – today would be handy," he ruefully added.

 It certainly would.

 "How did he manage to escape, in the end?" Liz had been wondering that ever since hearing that he'd left Earth, but Harry seemed puzzled by the question.

 "Well, he did rather a lot of escaping, really, but I'm not sure those situations would be relevant to us here."

 "No, I meant Earth – how did he get away from Earth? He was trapped here when I knew him," she explained, surprised that he didn't know. "At least, that's what he told me. His ship, his TARDIS, was non-operational. It's why he was with UNIT in the first place: he was stuck on Earth with nothing better to do, no way of leaving. He used to complain about it all the time."

 "Oh, well I don't know about that," said Harry, frowning. "The TARDIS was working perfectly well when I met him – a little too well, in fact." He scratched at his head, looking rather chagrined at the memory. There was a story there, and if they remained locked in here long enough, she'd probably get to hear it.

 "So he really did get that old box of his working again, then." Disappointing though it was that he wasn't around to help them out of this particular fix, she was pleased for him. He'd wanted his freedom back so very badly.

 Having said that, though, there wasn't much she wouldn't give for the Doctor and his working TARDIS to be here, right now, to get them out of this – she wanted her freedom back, as well.

 "Must have done," Harry agreed as he stood up to examine the door again. "Look, do you suppose there's anything we can do with this?"

 Liz couldn't fault his resolve, but they'd already checked the door. "It's locked."

 "Yes, I know. But see how the lock is fitted. I think we could get that out."

 Liz humoured him by getting up to take a look. It certainly wasn't a lock designed with prisoners in mind, but, "We'd need tools," she pointed out. "And I don't know where you think we're going to get those in here."

 "Well, what about that?" He pointed at a nearby shelf and Liz stared at it for a moment, confused. The shelf was empty – broken, in fact. There were no tools there. But then she suddenly understood what he meant.

 "The bracket, you mean?" The way the shelf was hanging off, it wouldn't be hard to prise the bracket free, and if the edge were fine enough, maybe… "You know, that might actually work!"

 Maybe they wouldn't need the Doctor and his TARDIS after all.

 "Worth a shot, anyway – wait, look out." Harry jumped back as the door suddenly swung open again and the armour-clad alien reappeared in the opening, framed with light, frustrating their nascent hopes of escape.

 "You are a doctor?" it snapped at Harry, who looked wary.

 "I am, yes," he cautiously agreed.

 "You will come."

Liz quickly put a hand on his arm to stop him going, because instinct said that being split up in these circumstances was never a good idea, and she was suddenly acutely aware that she did not want to be left alone in this dark little cupboard, unable to see what was happening outside. He took her hand and squeezed it and said, "My colleague is also familiar with your friend's medical condition – we were looking after him together."

 The alien looked her up and down from behind its helmet, those sharp eyes bearing a look that on a human she'd have called exasperation. "Then you will come also," it declared.

 

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 "Yes, all right, there's no need to push," Liz snapped at the alien guard as she and Harry were herded along a long, shabby corridor, past numerous closed doors, and out into a large, open space that had weeds growing through cracks in the concrete floor and pigeons roosting in the rafters, gaining entrance through high windows that had barely an intact pane remaining. The building must have been some kind of factory or warehouse, she realised as she gazed around in search of any detail that might help her get her bearings, but had clearly been derelict for quite some time now – at least had been until the aliens took up residence. An array of strange equipment had been set up along one wall, a lash-up of oddly shaped consoles filled with dials and switches and tiny screens displaying illegible readouts, with a mess of cables and wires winding all around, connected up to a tall glass case that was lit up from within by a blindingly brilliant light, humming with power.

 Nearby, lying on a bench and stirring restlessly, with some more of his comrades clustered around him, was the alien who had been their patient – recognisable not only by his semi-comatose state but because he was the only one not wearing his armour, which was probably still in sick bay back at UNIT headquarters.

 "I say, he's starting to wake up," Harry murmured, and their alien guard gave him another little push.

 "You will attend."

 Harry looked a bit annoyed at this peremptory treatment, but he was a doctor, so probably would have wanted to attend his patient anyway, hostile alien or not, even without the incentive of knowing that their captors were all well armed. Certainly he didn't bother arguing, but simply went across to the patient and began to check him over, as calmly as if they were still in his sick bay at UNIT headquarters.

 "Why were you holding him prisoner?" one of the aliens demanded in a belligerent tone.

 "We weren't," Liz promptly countered, not about to let them get away with such an accusation. "He fell out of some kind of fissure and was found unconscious in the street. He was brought to us for medical attention. How did you know where to find him?"

 There was a pause. The assembled aliens glanced at one another, those ornate helmets keeping their expressions always inscrutable. At length, one of them said, "We had feared him lost forever. Then today a tracker in his armour became active."

 Liz looked at Harry. "I'm afraid that was probably me," she admitted. "I did have a bit of a poke around at it, earlier." She hadn't realised she'd triggered one of the devices, and if she'd activated a tracking device without realising it, they were probably even luckier than she'd thought that she hadn't also set off one of those in-built weapons by accident.

 "If you did not injure him, then what is wrong with Brask?" another of the aliens suspiciously demanded.

 "Brask? Is that this chap's name?" Harry asked. Upon receiving an affirmative response, he said, "Well, as far as I can tell, his brain seems to have got a bit scrambled, most likely when he fell through that fissure, or whatever we're calling it. He seems to be recovering well now, though – reflexes are good and he's getting more alert by the minute. Back on his feet in no time, I'd say."

 Not bothering with so much as a word either of gratitude or relief, the aliens promptly started arguing among themselves.

 "If transit through the portal causes such injury, it is useless – we cannot sell such a thing."

 "But the device can be refined, Tarl, this experiment was too soon. We need more time –"

 "Too much time has already been wasted on this! All this time and we still have no control over the device."

 "No, but we're growing close, Brask's return proves it. Our understanding of the directional vectors is growing, with more time we will gain pinpoint accuracy –"

 "And who will volunteer for further tests? You?"

 "We have the humans."

 "Excuse me?" Liz exclaimed, exchanging an alarmed look with Harry, who simultaneously protested, "Now, hang on just a minute."

 The aliens ignored them completely, absorbed in their debate.

 "What good is learning to use the device if it causes injury each time? Who will pay for that?" insisted the doubter, who had been addressed as Tarl – the armour of each of them was quite distinctive, making it possible to recognise which was which in spite of the concealed faces. "We should abandon the project."

 "But we have already accepted the advance payment – if we default on the deal now, what then?"

 "There's no need to panic," a new voice interjected. The speaker emerged from where he'd been sitting, concealed by the bulk of the equipment, and Liz felt her jaw drop with astonishment. It was a human. And he looked familiar. "Now that we know the effect the device has had," the man argued, "We can look to identify the cause and then eliminate the side effect – all it needs is time and patience to get the calibration right, I'm certain, and surely your buyers will be willing to wait a little longer, if they want this technology badly enough."

 He looked _very_ familiar. He was short and wiry, with a mane of unruly, bushy hair that had once been ginger, now faded to a peppery grey, and a thick moustache long enough that it joined up with his lengthy sideburns – not a man she'd met before in the flesh, but she'd seen his picture in science journals, and his lion-like appearance was distinctive enough to remember and recognise. He'd looked younger in the pictures she'd seen, less careworn, but it was definitely him. "Dr Martin!" she exclaimed in surprise.

 He looked startled – and then frowned at her with dawning recognition. "Professor Elizabeth Shaw, isn't it? My word! I've seen your work. What the dickens are you doing here?"

 "You know this man?" Harry murmured, while the aliens suspiciously asked Martin much the same question about her.

 "I know of him," Liz quietly explained, but a groan from Brask interrupted before she could say any more. He was waking up properly now and became the centre of attention once again. The aliens – a race called Tyrsians, they learned – seemed eager to make use of their medical expertise in assessing the condition of their comrade as he recovered…but as soon as it became clear that Brask's faculties were entirely unimpaired by his prolonged coma, they had no further use for their prisoners.

 "These humans are in the way," declared the one named Tarl. "Take them away and lock them up, Hent. They may be useful later."

 

UNITUNITUNIT

 The storeroom was just as depressingly gloomy second time round, the door just as securely locked. The broken shelves came away from the wall easily enough, however. It was a sign that things were looking up, Liz told herself as she helped Harry prise one of the brackets free of its mooring. This was the only plan either one of them had managed to come up with, their only chance of escape. It had to work.

 The bracket had a hooked edge that was fine enough and narrow enough that it was just about possible to use it as an impromptu and very imperfect tool to dismantle the lock. The plate was very tightly screwed into place, however, and had been painted over more than once – female emancipation was all well and good, but female strength was at a distinct disadvantage here, and there was only room for one, so Liz could only sit back and let Harry work at it, frustrated that she wasn't able to contribute more.

 "So who was that chap out there?" Harry asked, frowning and grunting with effort as the unwieldy metal slipped and scraped against the door plate and dug into his hands. "You seemed to know him."

 "By reputation only," Liz explained. "Dr Lewis Martin, he's a scientist.He's been involved with some high profile projects at Space Control and the Aircraft Institute, as I understand it. I can't imagine what he's doing here.Although…"

 Harry glanced up from his work. "Although?"

 "Well, I don't know the man myself," she reiterated, "But from what I've heard he's quite brilliant, but rather unstable. Some of the projects he's been involved with have struggled to attract funding for that reason – he's not seen as a good investment."

 Harry lifted an eyebrow. "Hardly seems an excuse for all this."

 "No," she agreed. "And I can't imagine how he even met them." She worried at a nail for a moment, fretting, because every instinct she possessed was screaming at her to get away from here and not look back, and yet… "We're going to have to find out more, Harry. We can't just run. We have to know what they're doing here – you heard what they were saying."

 "About the device they've been experimenting with but don't actually know how to use," he nodded, head bent over his work once more.

 "A device that generates portals, of some kind…but what does that mean? We have to find out; we can't just leave them to it. What are those portals, where do they lead, what's the device for?"

 "Well, they intend to sell it, from what they were saying earlier."

 "But who will they sell it to? And what will they use it for? Why are they here?"

 "All good questions, said Harry, "And I agree with you. But rather more to the point, I think I'd also quite like to avoid being used as a guinea-pig for their experiments, if at all possible."

 Well, yes. That was also a concern. "Yes, me too," Liz wryly agreed. "How are you getting on?"

 As if in answer to her question, the unwieldy bracket he was attempting to use as a screwdriver slipped again and he cursed his frustration…and then hastily apologised, far too much of a gentleman to let himself get away with swearing in the presence of a woman, even in these circumstances. Liz might have been amused – or possibly exasperated – if she weren't so anxious. "Slowly," he ruefully admitted.

 "If they come back and catch us at it, we won't get another chance," she reminded him.

 "No, I know."

 It was no good. She couldn't just sit and watch any longer. "Here, let me take a turn," she said, reaching out to take the bracket.

 It was even harder than it looked, trying to use that clumsy piece of metal as a tool. Conversation lapsed as Liz determinedly worked away at the lock for a while before ceding the impromptu screwdriver back to Harry for another turn. It seemed to take forever before the plate finally came away from the door, allowing them access to the inner workings of the lock, which would have been far easier to remove if their sole tool weren't so cumbersome.

 The door swung open at long last and they hastened to make their escape…only to realise that one of the Tyrsians, the one called Hent, was striding down the corridor toward them even as they stepped out of the storeroom.

 Hent didn't even bother shouting, didn't give them as much as a second to regroup and attempt to flee. He simply raised his arm the moment he saw them and discharged that built-in weapon in his gauntlet, with the same crackle and blaze of light as in the raid back at UNIT headquarters.

 Harry dropped without a sound, unconscious before he hit the ground, nothing Liz could do. She could only watch, helpless, as the sturdy alien strode toward her, expecting him to shoot her, too, at any moment. Instead he took hold of her arm. "You will come," he declared, and hauled her away.

 


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> While Liz learns what the aliens are up to, Sarah brainstorms with the Brigadier back at UNIT, but then the approach of another alien spaceship throws everyone onto alert

 Sarah had run out of things she could usefully do to aid the investigation and was starting to flag, as the day wore on with no real news. She'd only dropped by in the first place to say hello and see how they were getting on, and would have gone home hours ago if this crisis hadn't blown up, but blown up it had and she couldn't bear to leave in the middle of it, not knowing if Harry was all right…but she had no real function here and the frustration of not being able to do more to help was starting to drive her to distraction. She'd never been very good at sitting around with nothing to do at the best of times.

 "Another cup of tea, Miss Smith?" one of the corporals asked as he bustled past, and she gritted her teeth as she shook her head. If one more person asked that question, she might just scream. There had to be something more she could do than sit around drinking army-issue tea all day, waiting for news. She just didn't know what. There were no witnesses to interview, no promising leads to follow up on, nothing to do but wait.

 Tucked away in a quiet corner of the incident room, she asked herself yet again what the Doctor would do if he were here – and once again drew a total blank.

 "Just had another of those reports in, sir…oh, you haven't seen the Brigadier, have you, Miss?" asked Benton as he hurried into the room and came screeching to an abrupt halt when he found his superior was not where he'd expected him to be.

 "I think he went over to the tracking station." Sarah pushed upright from the slumped position she'd fallen into, in anticipation of some positive news. "Why, has something happened?"

 He shook his head, dashing her hopes. "Not really – just another one of those reports, similar to the others. Articulated lorry this time, high-sided, crashed about twenty-five minutes after the raid here – the driver claims something hit him, forced him off the road, but he couldn't give a description of the other vehicle, reckons it was invisible. The coppers who took his statement didn't take him seriously, that's why it's taken so long to reach us."

 It was a familiar story: the slow trickle of similar reports had been the only news of note all day, which wasn't saying much.

 "Was it along the same route as the others?" Sarah hopped to her feet to watch as stuck another pin in the map on the wall where all the other such incidents had already been plotted. It certainly _looked_ like a route, a bit, but there weren't very many pins – how many dots did it take to be sure they were forming an actual pattern?

 "More or less – if you can call it that," he shrugged. "I mean, if we're reading them right, they seem to sort of all point along some kind of route, but there aren't really enough to be sure."

 "It's a shame there aren't more of them, then," Sarah glumly observed. "That might give us something a bit more solid to go on."

 "Well, how many people are going to ring the police and say they think they just saw something invisible shoot past? Or didn't see, more to the point," he philosophically pointed out. "I'm surprised we've got as many as we have, to be frank."

 "And how would you search for something that's invisible, anyway?" she sighed.

 "I've had teams up and down that route already, looking for out of the ordinary, rather than invisible," said Benton. "But it's just too big an area, even supposing the aliens stopped somewhere around the last of the non-sightings, and we don't know that they did. They could have gone any direction after that – no more incident reports doesn't mean they stopped there."

 "So this new report doesn't actually tell us anything useful at all, then, does it?" Sarah dropped back into her chair, dejected. It had been the same all day: no news, nothing to go on and nothing to do. "We've still got no idea who these aliens are, where they've gone or what they want – and even less idea why they took Harry and Liz."

 "Or what they've got to do with those fissure things," Benton agreed.

 "So, in fact, the only thing we really know is that these aliens, whoever they are, seem to be really lousy drivers!" She let out a long, heavy sigh of frustration, and then quietly admitted, "I really wish the Doctor was here."

 Benton looked sympathetic. "Made all this look like a doddle, didn't he?"

 He did. He'd probably have solved the entire case for them by now, if only he were here.

 It was unfair to expect him to always be here to solve their problems for them, she kept telling herself. This wasn't his world and they weren't his people, fond though he was of them – he had other concerns to occupy him and a whole universe to explore, and it was high time they learned to stand on their own feet, so to speak. Still, she'd gone through much of the day more than half expecting him to turn up at any moment. Because he always did, he had a nose for situations like this, his ability to always land in the middle of a crisis requiring his brilliance was uncanny, so why shouldn't he find his way back here just when they needed him? Yet common sense whispered that as many such crises as he found his way into the middle of and then helped to resolve, when you took into account the whole of time and space, there must be hundreds, thousands, even millions more that he never even knew about. So, with the whole of time and space at his disposal, why should he turn up here again just because they were struggling without him – how would he even know?

 It felt strange, though, being at UNIT and working on a case like this without the Doctor here – she just couldn't shake the feeling that something was missing. Funny how in peacetime she found the associations here comforting, yet now there was an emergency going on she felt exactly the opposite, the ongoing crisis making her miss him more keenly than ever.

 "I wonder if –" she began, only to be interrupted by the Brigadier as he came striding back into the room talking loudly to the corporal at his side.

 "What's that, Miss?" Benton asked, but the Brigadier was probably a better person to answer her query, so she turned to him instead, as soon as he'd sent the corporal off on another errand.

 "What about the space-time telegraph that the Doctor left, Brigadier?" she asked, because if the Doctor couldn't be expected to know they had a problem and needed help, surely the solution was to tell him. It might be unfair to expect him to always turn up to solve their problems for them, and he had other concerns now, she knew, that was why he'd dropped her off so abruptly – at the wrong end of the country, moreover _–_ but surely he would come if he knew his friends needed him. That was why he'd left the device in the first place. After all, he never had resigned from UNIT, not formally. He'd just drifted away because there was so much else to see and do, and that didn't have to mean he wouldn't ever come back, even if he was never going to be their permanent scientific advisor again.

 But the Brigadier looked chagrined. "I've already tried it – doesn't appear to be working."

 "Maybe it was only ever intended for one use only," Benton suggested.

 "Then it might have been helpful if he'd told us that at the time," the Brigadier snapped.

 So much for that fledgling hope – shot down in flames at the very first hurdle. Sarah dropped onto her chair again, disheartened.

 "Why don't you go home, Miss Smith?" the Brigadier gently suggested. "It's been a long day, you've worked hard and we're grateful for all your help – we'll keep you informed if there's any news."

 "No!" Sarah's reaction was instinctive, indignant at the mere thought of being sent home in the middle of the investigation, like a little girl who'd stayed up past her bedtime…but then she remembered where she was and that she had no real business being there in the first place. This was a military operation – a top secret military operation – and she was an unaffiliated civilian. Her involvement was accepted as a gesture of friendship and because she'd worked with the Doctor for a while, but if they wanted her to leave she had no actual right to refuse; it wasn't as if she had any official function on the investigation, in spite of her efforts to be useful. She softened her tone to wheedle, "I'd like to stay, Brigadier, if you don't mind, in case there's any news. I won't get in your way. I just wish there was more I could do to help."

 The Brigadier nodded and she relaxed slightly. He was an old softy, really, at heart. She might have no business being here, but he wasn't about to send her away and they both knew it. "Well, make sure you get some rest, then," he said, "It could be a long night."

 "Oh, I'm all right," she insisted. "I'm just a bit worried about Harry, that's all – and Liz, of course."

 But she'd only just met Liz, and as much as she'd liked what she saw of the scientist, didn't really know her. Harry, on the other hand, was her friend, her maddening, aggravating, but very dear friend, who was a good, kind person, for all his annoyingly old-fashioned little ways, with whom she'd shared so much. He was the only person she knew who understood what it was like to see the stars and then return to Earth.

 It was different for him, of course. He'd chosen to return home and seemed to have slipped back into his old life as effortlessly as if he'd never been away – aided and abetted in that by the fact that the Brigadier had regarded his unscheduled jaunt in the TARDIS as an occupational hazard rather than as going AWOL. Sarah, on the other hand, hadn't been ready to come home, had felt at times as if she could continue adventuring around the universe with the Doctor forever, and now that it was over was finding it a real struggle to pick up the threads of the life she'd had before she met him. But Harry was the only person she knew who could come close to understanding, the only person she could really talk to about everything she'd experienced out there among the stars, because he'd been there too, for a while.

 He'd better be all right. She was already missing one friend. She couldn't stand to lose another.

 "Sir!" Young Private Henderson appeared in the doorway looking agitated. "Sir, you'd better come. It's that man you brought in, the one who came out of that fissure. He's come around and he's going nuts, sir – hiding under the bed, says we're all devils!"

 "He's probably frightened out of his wits," said Sarah. She didn't have to see the man to guess that much.

 The Brigadier turned to her. "Well, then, Miss Smith. You did say you wanted to do more to help – I believe we may have found something you can help with."

 

UNITUNITUNIT

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"You will assist," declared Hent, giving Liz a slight shove as they returned to the one-time factory floor where the alien equipment had been set up.

 Pulling away from the stocky Tyrsian, she glared furiously at him. "Oh, will I now?"

 It was a futile protest and she knew it. Hent's helmeted face remained impassive, but his eyes were glittering as he calmly replied, "Yes. You will."

 It was all he said – it was all he needed to say. She had no recourse, no means of escape, and he was armed and dangerous, as was the other Tyrsian still in the room. As much as she hated to admit it, as things stood she was powerless against them – and Harry was even more defenceless, left sprawled unconscious in the hallway outside the storeroom they'd been locked in. Cooperation was her only option at this point, at least until a viable means of escape presented itself. And she had said that she wanted to learn more about what they were up to.

 "Of course she'll assist," Dr Lewis Martin interjected, beaming at her exactly as if she weren't being held captive. "How could she refuse? This is a once in a lifetime opportunity! I've seen some of your work, my dear," he added. "Your input on this project will be most valuable."

 Brilliant but unstable, that was Martin's reputation. Looking at him now, the way his eyes shone with a fervour that belied the situation utterly, Liz began to understand just what was meant by that.

 "You do realise that I'm a prisoner here, Dr Martin?" she carefully enquired, probing gently at the edges of his madness in hopes of gauging just how deeply it ran.

 Martin looked faintly puzzled. "Prisoner? Oh, my dear, what does that matter? When you see, when we show you, you will understand – you will be thankful! To be part of something like this! What a stroke of luck that brought you here!"

 The madness ran fairly deep, then. Well, at least she knew that now.

 "You will assist," Hent commanded once again, glowering away at her from behind his helmet.

 Liz gave in to the inevitable. "Yes, I will assist."

 "Then it is settled," said the other Tyrsian. "You are needed on the ship, Hent. I will guard."

 Hent nodded. "There will be no more failure," he loftily declared, as if he could make it so just by saying it, and then strode out of the room – exiting via a different door than the one he'd just dragged Liz through, this one apparently an exterior door that led out of the building, which was well worth knowing.

 He'd forgotten about Harry, Liz realised with a sudden thrill of hope. Either that or he was confident he had plenty of time to go back and lock him up again before he revived.

 There was a third option, which was that the second shot might have been fatal, but she was determined not to think like that. Negative thinking would only lead to despair, which she couldn't afford, not if she wanted to make it through this. All she could do was hope for the best and not remind the Tyrsians of the fact that their other prisoner was currently unsecured, both because Harry would be safer if they forgot that he existed and because it was the best chance either one of them had of escape just at present.

 She turned to Martin and the remaining Tyrsian. "All right, then. Why don't you tell me about this project of yours – what would you like me to do?"

 

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 "Hello," Sarah very gently called, edging slowly into sick bay, which was now empty of all other personnel, as they'd vacated the room to give her space to try to calm the panic-stricken man from the fissure. "It's all right; no one's going to hurt you. My name's Sarah. Can you tell me your name?"

 He had retreated into the farthest corner of the room by the time she got there, crouched against the wall in a defensive posture. Still, it didn't seem to have occurred to him to grab anything to use as a weapon to defend himself, so it could be worse, she reflected: he could have come out fighting, in his agitation.

 "What is this place?" he called in a low, frightened voice, and Sarah was thrown for a moment – should she attempt to explain UNIT or not? He'd have seen the uniforms everyone else was wearing, but she wasn't sure that would mean much to him, and telling him that he was at a military base would probably only serve to spook him even more than he already was.

 "This is our sick bay," she told him instead. "It's like a hospital – it's where we bring people who are sick or injured, so they can be treated." Only our doctor isn't here at the moment, she added in the privacy of her own mind – either of them. "You were brought here because you were unconscious. We've been looking after you. Can you tell me your name and where you come from?"

 "Miss Blackstow's garden," he said, voice slightly muffled since his face was pressed into his arms, which were hugging his knees to his chest. "I were in Miss Blackstow's garden. She'd a tree needed lopping, and I'd the time to spare for the commission, but, Miss!" He trembled. "The sky did open up! Swallowed me whole, it did!"

 "It's all right, it's all right," Sarah soothed. "You're safe now."

 "Safe?" He looked dubious, eyes darting around the room. "I don't know what manner of place this is!"

 Her suspicions about the man's origins solidifying further, Sarah looked around. The large, airy room was lit by fluorescent strip lights, had telephones mounted on the wall and was filled with both medical and laboratory equipment: drip stands, monitors and microscopes, other kinds of 'scopes she couldn't put names to, beakers and test tubes containing chemical solutions, and goodness knows what else. It was certainly functional, if not exactly inviting – but, to the eyes of this man, apparently more than a little alarming. She'd noticed his old-fashioned clothes earlier and noticed them again now – if she was right in her guess…. "Can you tell me your name?" she asked again.

 "Tom," he muttered into his arms. "I'm Tom Craddock, Miss."

 "Tom. I'm Sarah," she told him again. "I'm going to ask you another question now and it might sound a bit strange, but I'd like you to give me the answer anyway, all right? Can you tell me what year it is?"

 Tom raised his head to look her in the eyes for the first time, astonishment at the question temporarily overcoming his fear of his strange surroundings. "Why, Miss, do you not know?" he asked in amazement. "The year is 1834!"

 

UNITUNITUNIT

 "Eighteen thirty-four? Are you telling me that this man has somehow travelled through time?" the Brigadier protested, but it wasn't the concept of time travel that was bothering him, Sarah knew – he'd come to terms with that long before she met him. It was the specific fact of this particular incidence of time travel in the middle of an already baffling investigation that was the cause of his dismay.

 "Yep," she confirmed, dropping onto the chair set before his desk. "His name is Tom Craddock, he's a carpenter, and he was in the middle of chopping down a tree in his neighbour's garden in the village of Lower Tarrow in the year 1834 when the sky opened up and swallowed him – hey, I'm just telling you how he described it," she defended when the Brigadier looked at her askance.

 "So these fissures are in fact some kind of…rift in time, then," the Brigadier sighed.

 Sarah nodded. "Sounds very much like it, I'm afraid."

 "Marvellous." He looked annoyed. "The last time something like this happened, we ended up overrun by dinosaurs."

 "Yes, I remember." It was something she was unlikely to ever forget.

 "If the Doctor –" He cut himself off before he could complete that sentence, and Sarah felt sorry for him. She'd been missing the Doctor so much herself, it hadn't really occurred to her that she wouldn't be the only one. The Brigadier had worked with him for years, had relied on him, and a bizarre case like this must be especially daunting without that specialist expertise to lean on, for him even more than for her. She at least could walk away at any time she chose, being a volunteer, but he was responsible for solving this. "Yes, well," he gruffly continued. "And where is Mr Craddock now?"

 "Well, he was finding sick bay a bit alarming," Sarah explained. "All that equipment, you know. So Sergeant Bellamy's got him set up in one of the small interview rooms with something to eat. He's a lot calmer now, but he still doesn't know what to make of what's happened."

 "Well, that makes two of us," the Brigadier wryly remarked.

 "And that makes three of us, in fact," Sarah ruefully agreed. "Especially since the alien also fell through one of the fissures – I can't imagine that belongs in 1834!"

 "Yes, how does that tie in?" the Brigadier pondered, looking thoughtful. "Does Craddock know anything about it?"

 He always had liked to have someone to talk to when he was thinking, she'd noticed that about him before. He had that in common with the Doctor, of course, but the difference was that the Doctor only really needed an audience to talk _at_ , didn't really require them to do anything more than listen, most of the time, whereas the Brigadier liked his audience to be rather more interactive, helping him puzzle through whatever problem he was working on at the time. And that role suited Sarah just fine right now, since she found it useful to think out loud as well.

 "Well, that's not a very easy question to ask, Brigadier," she pointed out. "The man's never even seen a light bulb before, so 'were there any aliens hanging around where you come from?' isn't really going to go over very well, is it?"

 "You did ask, though," said the Brigadier, unmoved. It wasn't a question. Sarah sighed.

 "As it happens, yes, I did ask. I asked if he'd seen or heard of anything unusual in the last few days, before the sky swallowed him." The Brigadier raised an eyebrow, but she stood by her choice of phrase. It might not be scientific, but it was how Tom described his experience, and it was his experience to describe. "He said he'd heard a funny story in the market – children from a neighbouring village claimed to have found a monster lying dead in the woods, so some of the locals went looking for it, but it was gone by the time they got there. Tom thought it was just the children making up stories. But then the sky ate him. And he ended up here. I think he's probably willing to believe just about anything now."

 The Brigadier looked thoughtful. "The alien and Mr Craddock were both rendered comatose by their passage through the fissures," he mused.

 "Yes, that's what I was thinking – in that state, it probably would look dead to a frightened child who stumbled across it. And if it revived before they came back with the adults, it could easily have hidden," Sarah suggested.

 "Which implies, if I understand the situation correctly, that one of these aliens also travelled through a fissure to 1834," said the Brigadier with a nod, "Possibly the same creature, or possibly not. So, we have rifts in time being opened, through which beings may pass – in either direction, it would appear. Three people have so far fallen through from our end; Mr Craddock came in the other direction," he summarised. "And at least one alien appears to have travelled in each direction, we think."

 "Yes, I think we do think that," Sarah agreed. "So what does all it add up to?"

 The Brigadier rolled his eyes. "Trouble, Miss Smith. It all adds up to trouble."

 Benton had entered the office just in time to hear that statement. "I hate to say it, sir, but I've got a bit more trouble to report," he apologetically began. "We've just had word from Space Control – seems they've picked up something on the long-range scanner."

 As if they didn't have enough to worry about already.

 The Brigadier groaned, "Oh, what now?"

 

 UNITUNITUNIT

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It was a time travel device. The Tyrsians had got hold of a time travel device – had _stolen_ a time travel device – and had decided that the empirical approach would be the best way to learn how to use it.

 They'd stolen a _time travel device_ , with no instruction manual included, and had tried pressing a few buttons here and there, in effect, to find out how it worked – damaging their ship in the process.

 They'd stolen a time travel device, and had brought it to _Earth_ , apparently more or less at random, to continue playing around with it while they repaired the damage to their ship.

 It beggared belief.

 The more Liz heard about the Tyrsians' experiments with the device, in little snippets and snatches here and there as she was shown around it and asked for her input, the more astounded and furious she was at their casual, cavalier attitude toward the incredible technology they'd got hold of and the breathtaking irresponsibility they'd shown in their use of it.

 Brask, it seemed, had been an early victim of their experiments, catapulted away to an unknown point in time through the one of the first portals they'd managed to open. After that, they'd panicked – not that the Tyrsian technician, Rahl, put it quite that way, but it was fairly obvious, reading between the lines of what he did say. They'd been unable to interpret the readouts given by the device, so were only able to approximate where Brask had been sent, and without a precise location to guide them had been unable to manipulate the controls of the device delicately enough to lock onto his biometric pattern and pull him back. They'd tried, though, repeatedly, and didn't seem to have even realised that they'd lost the lock on their own location, in their efforts, resulting in numerous portals opening up indiscriminately across the south of England instead of in this room, through which several innocent people had been lost. As a result, when they had succeeded in retrieving their lost colleague, he'd been deposited in such a random location that they hadn't realised they'd been successful, so had continued their experiments.

 Liz reminded herself that she needed to keep her temper. She'd wanted to learn more about what the Tyrsians were up to, and couldn't have asked for a better opportunity than this, besides which she was still a prisoner, as was Harry – and she still didn't know for sure what had become of him. Berating the aliens for their recklessness, therefore, would not be either appropriate or productive. She needed to play along with them, not antagonise them.

 Oh, it was hard, though. The desire to bang all of their heads together for being so irresponsible burned.

 "And how did you get involved, Dr Martin?" she carefully enquired of her fellow scientist while Rahl was otherwise occupied, checking some of the connections.

 "Destiny, my dear, destiny!" he replied, eyes shining with the fervour of a true believer.

 "Really? And just how did destiny manage that?" she sceptically asked.

 Thus encouraged, Martin babbled at length about the sequence of events that had brought him together with the Tyrsians. The gist of the story appeared to be that he had been working late one night on a secret project, which Liz gathered was his own secret rather than a matter of national security, and the main secret of which was that he'd been denied funding for it so had indulged in a spot of covert pilfering from other projects to acquire the resources he required. The equipment he'd built sounded genuinely impressive, providing greatly enhanced scanning capabilities over that currently used as standard – and it was while tweaking this equipment that he'd noticed the Tyrsian ship descending from orbit.

 "They are able to conceal their ship from most scanners, you see," he explained. "Terribly clever technology – not theirs, of course, they stole it, they're scavengers, you see. They call it 'the shroud'. It hides anything inside, even from the naked eye. But not from me! I saw them! Just a glimpse, but it was enough!" He was almost bursting with pride in his achievement.

 "And you didn't report this?" Liz sternly demanded.

 Martin's lip curled. "Why should I?" he petulantly sneered. "This is mine. I found it. Why should I tell anyone? When I show them what I've learned, when I bring this technology to the world, then they'll see!"

 Mad, quite mad.

 "Of course, of course," Liz soothed, anxious to keep the man talking, "You're quite brilliant and everyone will realise that soon. Was it your idea to set up a base here?"

 Martin perked up again. "I arranged everything," he bragged, "The location, the utilities, everything. We struck a deal: my assistance for a share in the technology. We all benefit!"

 "There will be no share for anyone in anything unless the device can be made to work reliably," Rahl barked, coming back over to glower anxiously at them. "Nothing else matters, we must master the technology!"

 "We're nearly there," Martin loftily declared. "I'm sure of it."

 "Rahl!" The shout came from the direction of exterior door, where Hent and Tarl were jogging back into the room at speed. "On the scanner – a ship approaching," Tarl called. "It is the Atarons!"

 "How did they find us?" the technician immediately squeaked, sounding more than a little panicked, which was interesting. Whatever or whoever these Atarons were, the Tyrsians were afraid of them. What remained to be seen was whether this turned out to be a good thing or a bad thing, from a human point of view.

 "They should be unable to detect us," Hent balefully insisted. "The shroud is enabled; it conceals us from their scanners."

 "This human detected us," Rahl reminded him, indicating Martin.

 "But my equipment is rather special," Martin proudly interjected.

 "The shroud was temporarily disabled when we sent out the land vehicle to retrieve Brask," said Tarl, ignoring Martin completely. "Perhaps they detected a signal then."

 "Then they know where we are." Rahl was wide-eyed with alarm.

 "They have traced us to this planet," Tarl grimly agreed. "They may not have pinpointed the exact location, but we must hurry. We are hidden from their scanners now, but we cannot rely on concealment indefinitely. Have you perfected the device yet?"

 "We are close, I am sure," Rahl replied. "The human female has been of some additional assistance."

  _Thank you very much_ , Liz sourly thought to herself, careful not to let her resentment show as she listened with interest to the debate. The less of a threat they thought she was, the more likely they were to drop their guard, and she might in time be able to take advantage of that.

 "Close is not enough," Tarl snapped. "Keep working – we are running out of time."

 

UNITUNITUNIT

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 Sarah kept quiet amid the hustle and bustle of UNIT's tracking station in the middle of a full blown UFO alert, torn between wanting to be part of the action and not wanting to get in the way and be asked to leave.

 The atmosphere was tense, with radio contact flying back and forth between the radar operators here and similar stations around the world as they correlated their data to track the path of the unidentified spacecraft on its approach to Earth, while the Brigadier and Benton fielded high level telephone calls, coordinating the response.

 It was definitely a spaceship, rather than an asteroid, that much had been established early on – the approach was apparently too controlled to be anything else – and now the Brigadier appeared to be caught up in a power struggle between UNIT's Central Command in Geneva and the governments of various nations regarding whose jurisdiction it fell under and what the most appropriate action might be.

 "MOD is on standby to launch missiles, sir," Benton reported.

 "You're just going to shoot it down?" Sarah forgot that she'd intended to stay out of the way. "You can't!"

 "Miss Smith." The Brigadier spoke from somewhere behind her, his voice stern, and she turned to face him, worrying at the edge of her lip with her teeth. "While I appreciate your enthusiasm, experience and willingness to pitch in, this is a matter of world security, not your decision to make."

 If the Doctor were here, he would _make_ it his decision, while the world's leaders were still busy arguing it out among themselves. That wasn't an option open to Sarah, but she knew how he felt about the Brigadier's 'shoot first, ask questions later' philosophy and tended to agree, at least until more facts were available. "But you don't know anything about them," she argued, "Who they are, what they want."

 "We know that this base came under attack earlier today," the Brigadier grimly pointed out, "And that aliens have been operating around the south of England for several days now, intentions unknown. We can't afford to take any chances – we must be prepared to take defensive measures."

 "But what about Harry and Liz?" she protested. "They're still being held hostage, remember."

 "Yes, I haven't forgotten that, Miss Smith," he snapped. He was looking stressed and Sarah bit at her lip again, wondering how they could know what to do for the best. Any hostile action could potentially endanger the lives of their captured friends, but if the safety of the many had to be weighed against the safety of the few and that decision ended up on his shoulders…

 "It's a precaution," Benton chipped in. "They aren't in firing range yet anyway."

 "Approaching orbital flight path now, sir, bearing two zero eight," one of the radar operators interjected.

 "Predicted destination?" the Brigadier tartly asked, adding to Benton, "Tell the Ministry to stand by for launch."

 "Checking…" said the operator "If this bearing holds, estimated contact point would be…south coast of England – somewhere between Hastings and Eastbourne."

 "MOD is waiting for your order, sir," said Benton.

 "Wait, sir," the radar operator spoke up again. He checked his instruments carefully, had a quick conversation with a couple of his fellows both in the room and via radio link with overseas stations, and then nodded. "Houston and Hawaii HAL confirm: the vessel has halted its descent and taken up a low Earth orbit, now holding steady at an altitude of six hundred miles."

 Sarah stared at him, mentally translating the technical gobbledygook into something approaching English. She'd had some practice at that, of course, tagging along with the Doctor for as long as she had. "You mean they aren't landing, they're just orbiting."

 "That's right, Miss," the operative nodded.

 The Brigadier was on the phone again already, talking at speed to someone in Geneva or the Ministry or someplace like that, while Benton was on another line, similarly engaged. Sarah frowned at the radar instruments that had reported the movement of the unidentified spacecraft. "But what are they doing, what do they want?" she wondered.

 

UNITUNITUNIT

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With Tarl and Hent having returned to their spaceship to continue repairs, leaving Rahl to carry on working on the time travel device, Liz attempted to make sense of the developing situation. "So what you're saying is that these creatures, these aliens…"

 "The Atarons," Rahl helpfully supplied.

 "Atarons. They're chasing you because you stole this device from them?" Cops and robbers on an intergalactic scale, in effect – it might almost be comical, if it weren't so serious. They weren't even good thieves, at that.

 "It was hoped to make our fortune," Rahl sighed. "But the project has been plagued by disaster ever since we landed here. Your planet is cursed!"

 "Well then, if the Atarons can't detect you and Earth is so unlucky, why not just pack up and leave – sneak away behind their backs?" she suggested, dryly adding, "I won't tell." As long as they didn't try to take her with them, that was.

 But Rahl shook his head. "That is not possible," he said, so regretfully that it was clear the idea had already occurred to him.

 "There are receptors spread around this site, so the shroud would have to be temporarily turned off," Martin chipped in, clearly glad of an opportunity to show off how much he knew. "They'd be seen."

 So much for that idea, then – but it suggested that their 'fantastic' shroud technology wasn't infallible after all, which might be worth knowing. On the other hand, it also meant that the Tyrsians were effectively trapped, and although they appeared less than wholly competent, they were still extremely dangerous, Liz had no doubt about that, perhaps all the more so because they were cornered.

 "They're scanning again," said Tarl, hurrying back into the makeshift workshop on the former factory floor.

 "Let them scan," Hent bullishly snarled, close at his comrade's heels. "They can't see us."

 "We cannot rely on concealment, not indefinitely," Tarl snapped at him before turning back to Rahl. "Repairs on the ship are almost complete. And the device?"

 If they wanted to sell the device in full working order then no, they weren't anywhere near ready. Liz could have told him that, based on what she'd seen over the last couple of hours. Discretion being the better part of valour, however, she stayed quiet and kept out of it while Rahl ummed and ahhed and refused to commit himself either way.

 "If you cannot say for sure, then find out," Tarl growled. "Test the device again – use the other human. Hent, fetch him."

 A long, awkward pause followed, during which it became painfully obvious that Hent really had forgotten to go back and make sure Harry was securely locked up again. A surge of sudden optimism rushed through Liz as she surreptitiously glanced at her watch. It had been well over two hours, so if their previous experience could be taken as a baseline and the effect of the weapon was not cumulative, he should have recovered by now. Hopefully.

 If she believed in crossing her fingers for luck, she'd have done it, as Hent hurried away in the direction of the storeroom.

 He returned just moments later, alone. "The human is gone!"

 A smile of delight crept across Liz's face despite her best attempt to suppress it, and Tarl turned on her at once. "What do you know? Where has he gone?"

 "I don't know, I really don't," Liz defended, and as she said it she realised just how true it was. She'd only met Harry yesterday and didn't know him nearly well enough to predict what he'd do now. Would he stay close and try to help her get away from their captors as well? Or would he seek to escape the premises and raise the alarm, then return with reinforcements to rescue her? She had no idea – all she knew for sure was that he could be absolutely anywhere by now.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Liz and Harry manage to escape at last, while Sarah takes matters into her own hands - with unexpected consequences

  The crisis seemed to have scaled down a notch now it was apparent that the UFO did not intend to land any time soon and a bit of time had gone by without any kind of attack being launched from orbit. Which was not to say that either of those things weren't going to happen, but they hadn't happened yet and that had to be a good thing, surely.

 You could cut the atmosphere in UNIT's incident room with a knife, still, regardless. The Brigadier might as well have had that telephone surgically attached to his ear it had been so long since Sarah saw him without it.

 Since nothing much seemed to actually be happening at the moment, though, she slipped out of the room to get some air and a glass of water. While she was at it she had a bit of a chat with Private Henderson, who was manning the front desk – this was his first full-scale alien invasion experience, it turned out, and he was more than a little nervous about it – but then found herself alone and at a loose end again when Benton called him over to help with something. And then the phone rang.

 Sarah answered it automatically, had the receiver halfway to her ear before she remembered that she wasn't supposed to answer UNIT's phone because she didn't work there. Henderson was already hurrying back over, looking at her somewhat askance for the breach of proper military protocol, but it was a bit late to worry about that now, so she carried on, adopting her best telephone voice. "Hello, this is UNIT Headquarters."

 There was a pause.

 "Sarah?" The voice sounded slightly taken aback – she wasn't who he'd been expecting to pick up – but was very familiar and very welcome, to say nothing of unexpected. Sarah was so startled she almost dropped the phone.

 "Harry?"

 "Shall I take that now, Miss?" Henderson was asking, but Sarah barely even heard him.

 "Harry, where are you, are you all right, what's happening?" The words came tumbling out, almost falling over one another in her haste. "It's Harry," she hissed at Henderson, "Go get someone!"

 "Sarah, I need you to get someone there to trace this call, quickly," Harry was saying instead of answering her questions, his voice low but urgent. "I can't talk for long, they're looking for me."

 "But where are you, Harry?" she impatiently repeated.

 "Well, I don't know that, Sarah," he said, a note of equal impatience, or maybe just tension, drifting into his voice. "Some kind of derelict factory, by the look of it – if someone there can trace the call, maybe you can find out."

 "Trace the…?" She had no idea how to do that, but looked around to see that Henderson had found Benton, and quickly called over to them, "Harry says we have to trace this call."

 Benton immediately rapped out brisk instructions to Henderson, who jumped to while Benton himself held out his hand for the phone. "I'd better have a word with him myself, Miss."

 But Harry was already saying, "Got to go, old girl, I think someone's coming – I'll try to leave the line open and hope they don't notice."

 That was as much as Sarah heard before she handed the phone to Benton, who hurriedly called, "Dr Sullivan? Hello?" and then waited, listening intently for a moment, before shaking his head, looking puzzled. "The line's still open but there's no one there."

 "He said he thought someone was coming," Sarah quickly explained. "I just hope he had time to hide."

 Benton turned to Henderson. "Have we got a trace on the call?"

 "Working on it, sir," Henderson reported, and he had his mouth open to add something more when a sudden hiss of static filled the air. Within seconds the noise had risen to an almost deafening pitch and Sarah clamped her hands over her ears in pain, saw Benton and Henderson shouting something at each other while doing likewise.

 Then it was gone, the noise cutting off as abruptly as it had begun, although the ringing in Sarah's ears took a bit longer to subside. A moment later the radio suddenly clicked into life – the tannoy, as well – a strident, sibilant voice ringing out from every available transmitter within earshot. "Attention, peoples of Earth. This is Commander Tace of the Ataron Special Forces. There are fugitives hiding among you. Surrender them and you will be rewarded, conceal them and punitive action will be taken. You have 24 hours to comply. Attention, peoples of Earth…"

 As the message began to repeat, Sarah looked at Benton and saw her own astonishment mirrored in his face. Then he started to run and she followed, sprinting down the corridors. Every device they passed that was capable of bearing a transmission was loudly broadcasting the same message. They burst into the communications room to find the Brigadier already there, barking at the operators to lock down the frequency being used.

 "We can't, sir," one of the hapless operators helplessly replied. "The broadcast is overriding every protocol we've tried."

 "We'll have world-wide panic on our hands if this carries on," the Brigadier shouted over the continuing broadcast…which ended even as he concluded, "Lock it down, man!" so that his voice rang out loudly in the sudden hush.

 "It's stopped!" Sarah exclaimed.

 "They must think we've got the message by now," Benton remarked.

 "Yes, and they'd be right," the Brigadier snapped. "I want a D-notice issued to the press and a covering statement prepared. Can we reply to that message?" He turned back to the radio operators.

 "I think so, sir. It might take a bit of time to set up."

 While the operators fiddled with their controls and gabbled highly technical jargon at each other, the Brigadier and Benton discussed cover stories for the general public and fielded more calls from London and Geneva, and Sarah fidgeted impatiently.

 Eventually one of the operators handed the Brigadier a microphone and delivered a complicated explanation about radio frequencies, transmitters, satellites and angles before saying that he thought it would work, and that the aliens should manage to pick it up if they were listening, but they wouldn't know for sure until they tried.

 The Brigadier took the microphone and cleared his throat, looking awkward. "Yes, well, here goes," he muttered, before drawing himself up to his full height to speak into the microphone, crisp and clear. "This is Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart of the United Nations Intelligence Taskforce. We have received your message and would like to negotiate. Do you copy?"

 There was silence for a moment, everyone in the room listening intently. Then the Brigadier repeated his statement.

 "This is Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart of the United Nations Intelligence Taskforce. We have received your message and would like to –"

 With a loud hiss of static, a large screen on the wall suddenly flicked into life, bearing the image of…an alien – a completely _different_ alien than the ones who'd raided the place earlier. It was a fierce-looking creature with protruding brow ridges, a long hooked nose and flowing tentacles instead of hair and beard, wearing what appeared to be the equivalent of a military uniform.

 "This is Commander Tace," it – he – said in a brisk, businesslike tone, while the UNIT technicians gaped and whispered _'how do they do that?'_ to each other. "This connection is now secure. Do you represent the peoples of Earth?"

 The Brigadier floundered visibly for a moment, taken aback, but then rallied to speak into the microphone again. "Yes. Yes, I do. What is your purpose in coming here?"

 Still lurking quietly at the back of the room, Sarah watched in fascination as Tace briskly announced, "This Task Force is in pursuit of a criminal gang, which was traced to your planet. Can you explain this?"

 Well that put a new spin on the situation: _two_ groups of aliens working in opposition to each other. The Brigadier certainly looked startled. "A criminal gang? Do you mean aliens – odd looking chaps wearing armour?"

 "The creatures you describe are called Tyrsians," Tace loftily explained. "They have stolen valuable technology from our homeworld and we seek its return and the prosecution of the criminals. What do you know about this?"

 "Only that these creatures have been making a nuisance of themselves for several days now," the Brigadier admitted, frowning. "We're searching for them ourselves."

 "Then you will permit us to make landfall at once that we may conduct a thorough investigation and take them off your hands." It wasn't a request. The Brigadier bristled with indignation.

 "Under no circumstances," he firmly rebuffed. "I'm sorry, I sympathise with your aims, but I cannot allow further alien incursions on this world. My organisation is already in active pursuit of your 'criminals', whose activities on this planet fall within our jurisdiction. We will liaise with you regarding the progress of that investigation, but you must not attempt to land. Is that clear?"

 Commander Tace was extremely displeased. As the negotiations continued, Sarah glanced across and saw Private Henderson hovering in the doorway looking anxious as he glanced about. The Brigadier was fully occupied with his jurisdictional debate with the alien and Benton was on the phone to either London or Geneva again, keeping them appraised of the situation, so she quietly sidled over to the young private to see what was wrong.

 "I need to speak to Mr Benton," said Henderson. "I've got a fix on the location Dr Sullivan was calling from."

 The location Harry was calling from…Sarah realised with a start that she'd forgotten all about Harry's phone call, with everything else that was going on.

 "Mr Benton's a bit tied up at the moment," she told Henderson. "You'll have to catch him as soon as he finishes his call." But who knew how long it might then take to decide on a course of action and put any kind of operation together to go after Harry and Liz, since this second group of aliens were now throwing a spanner in the works. Sick to the back teeth of waiting around for the military to get their act together while her friends were in trouble, Sarah made a snap decision. "While we're waiting, perhaps you could tell _me_ what you've found…"

 

UNITUNITUNIT

UNITUNITUNIT

 

 With their enemies hard at their heels, their ship still undergoing repairs, their stolen time travel device not fully functional and one of their prisoners having escaped, the Tyrsians were in utter disarray.

 "The human will bring more humans and we have troubles enough," Tarl had bemoaned.

 So Hent had been sent to search for Harry, in disgrace for having allowed him to escape in the first place, and Rahl had gone to take his place on the ship, finalising repairs there…which left Liz alone with Lewis Martin, in whose self-interest the Tyrsians apparently had absolute faith, although they did seem concerned about whether or not he'd be able to handle her for them.

 "Oh, you needn't worry, she won't cause any trouble, will you, my dear," he'd indulgently declared, as if she were a good little schoolgirl, when the beleaguered Tarl expressed doubt. "We'll just push on with our work on the device while you get on with what you need to do."

 Sometimes, the willingness of men to underestimate women could be an advantage. Martin also, it seemed, honestly couldn't see any reason why Liz might want to escape when she had what he saw as the opportunity of a lifetime in front of her. It seemed almost a shame to disillusion him. Almost.

 While Martin fussed over the calibration of the machine, Liz hung back, surreptitiously appraising each of the several possible exits from the large workshop they were in. One was definitely an exterior door, but was also the route used by the Tyrsians to get to their ship, which meant the chances were high she'd be spotted if she made a run for it that way. Another led through to the corridor and offices where she and Harry had been locked up earlier, but Hent had gone that way to begin his search for Harry and, again, she would rather not run straight into him.

 There was a third door, set into the far wall with a few old boxes piled around in front of it. Where this one led, there was no way of telling.

 It was while Liz was looking across at that third door, trying to decide on the best course of action, that she caught a flicker of movement through the grubby viewing pane set into it – someone glancing through and quickly pulling back for fear of being seen.

 There was only one person in the building who had any reason to hide and that was Harry.

 "What is it? What are you looking at?"

 Her heart sank. She'd tried to hide her reaction, but Martin had caught it anyway, and he wasn't the type to let it drop. He also had only to shout loudly enough for Hent to hear and the jig was up.

 So she moved fast, snatching up a heavy Tyrsian instrument that had been left lying on a counter nearby and swinging it, before Martin had time to realise what she was doing. It connected with his head with a satisfying clunk, hopefully not so hard that it would cause any serious damage, but hard enough to knock him down and buy her a little time. As he crashed sideways into a console, stunned, Liz was already running toward that door.

 It was jammed. For a long, horrible moment, she thought it might actually be locked. It was Harry she'd seen lurking on the other side, though, and he started shoving at the door while she pushed aside the boxes from in front of it and pulled at the handle with all her might. After a few frantic moments, the warped wood finally gave way and the door fell open with a terrific groan.

 Would Hent have heard the noise? Would he realise what it was? How long would Martin stay down?

 Liz kept moving, rather than wait around to find out the answer to any of those questions, rushing through the door and quickly hauling it shut again behind her – it wasn't much, but might slow or confuse any pursuit at least a little.

 "Are you all right? I've found an exit, it's this way," Harry whispered as he guided her through a dark, murky space that appeared to have been some kind of storage area, full of mouldering heaps of discarded equipment and machinery.

 Found it but hadn't taken it; he'd come looking for her instead. That answered the question she'd pondered earlier.

 "I also found a working telephone in one of the offices," Harry continued as they entered what was probably some kind of loading bay, although it was hard to make out through the gloom. "So I managed to get a call out to UNIT, but I'm afraid I don't know if they were able to trace it. Still, with any luck there might be reinforcements on the way by now."

 Luck wasn't something Liz liked to depend on, as a rule. "We can't rely on that," she cautioned. It was a relief to know that contact with UNIT had been made, though, that help might just be on the way already…that all of this might be over soon.

 "Well, if we can find our way out of here," said Harry, "We can call again and make sure the alarm is raised."

 The large double doors exiting the loading bay were quite securely fastened, however, and they weren't going to be able to break through that lock with whatever odds and ends they could find lying about the place.

 "The window," said Liz, pointing. It was lower than those high windows through in the main hall and was already broken; it took only a few moments to pull some boxes over to help them climb up to it. The drop down the other side was a little steep, steep enough that she jarred her ankle quite badly as she landed, but it wasn't bad enough that she couldn't keep moving and that was all that mattered.

 She drew some small satisfaction from the fact that Harry landed every bit as awkwardly as she had, his greater height affording him no advantage whatsoever where leaping out of windows was concerned.

 Wherever they were, it was remote enough that there were no street lights anywhere nearby, but there was a bright moon tonight and not much cloud. That made it easier to see, to gauge their next move, but would also make it that much easier for any pursuit to spot them, so they had to move fast. They were now in a large, weed-ridden, rubbish-strewn yard, close to a drive that led to a gateway in the fence that ringed the property. The gate would be locked, of course, but they'd found their way past two locked doors already today, so sprinted toward it as fast as her sore ankle would allow.

 Being long-legged, Harry moved faster than Liz and ran on ahead, which meant she had enough warning and time to skid to a halt when he was suddenly thrown back as if he'd run into an invisible wall.

 "Are you all right? Whatever happened?" she exclaimed, frowning curiously at the patch of completely empty space that appeared to have knocked him down.

 Harry sat up, rubbing his head. "That hurt. Some kind of forcefield, I suppose – I say, do be careful."

 The warning came as she reached out, gingerly but determinedly, to feel for herself. "A forcefield, you say?" It sounded intriguing – and the crackle of energy she felt as her fingertips brushed against it was more intriguing still.

 "Well, that's what it felt like," he said, picking himself back up off the ground.

 "Run into a lot of them, have you?" she lightly enquired as she began to feel along that invisible barrier, up and down and to either side, to scope out the extent of it.

 He huffed a rueful little chuckle. "Well, I've bounced off one or two, in my time, certainly. So what do you think?"

 Taking a step back to survey the invisible wall that stood between them and freedom, just a few short feet from a break in the fence that they could have escaped through, Liz sighed. "I think that we aren't going to get through here, not while this forcefield is in place."

 "No," he agreed. "UNIT will have a job getting through, as well, always supposing they've managed to track us here."

 "If we can find the controls, we might be able to disable it – but we'd have to get past those creatures, and they could come looking for us at any moment." Liz glanced around worriedly. "We'll have to find cover, check out the lie of the land."

 There were old crates and bits of machinery scattered all around the place, as well as knots of bramble and other weeds more than high enough to hide behind, all of which afforded them at least partial cover as they scouted cautiously around the perimeter, listening out intently for any sound of pursuit. Then, as they rounded a corner, darting from the cover of a bramble thicket to a stack of old crates, Liz was brought to a standstill by what she saw before her. Even in the gloom of night it was a spectacular sight: the Tyrsian spaceship, resting gently on a wide expanse of open land behind the building.

 "My word," Harry murmured alongside her.

 "Yes, quite," she fervently agreed, cautiously leaning around the crates to get a better look.

 "However did they manage to land a thing that size without anyone noticing?" he marvelled.

 That was a good question. "The shroud," Liz remembered. "It would have concealed their descent."

 "The…what did you say?"

 "Shroud – that's what they call it," she explained. "It's a piece of technology that conceals them from all – well most – scanning devices. Dr Martin mentioned it." He'd also said something else – about having to disable the shroud in order to take off because… "Harry, that's it!"

 He blinked. "It is? What is?"

 "Martin said they had to disable this shroud device to send out a land vehicle for the raid on UNIT, and they would have to disable it again if they want to take off because there are receptors spread around the site. Don't you see? He was talking about the forcefield we ran into; they had to turn it off to let the vehicle through – that's the shroud." Her mind was racing as she worked through the implications logically. "The receptors he talked about must be how they expand it beyond the ship to enclose the perimeter of this place. The main control would be inside the ship and we'll never make it in there, but if we can find one of those receptors…"

 "We might be able to throw a bit of a spanner in the works, perhaps," Harry enthused. "Sabotage it. Jolly good thinking! Oh, hang on, what's happening now?"

 They quickly ducked back behind their stack of crates, which suddenly felt a very flimsy means of defence, as both Hent and Lewis Martin came rushing out of the building, shouting agitatedly both at each other and to the rest of the Tyrsians still aboard their ship.

 "I rather think your absence has been spotted," Harry murmured.

 "They were already in a stew over your disappearing act," Liz told him in a low voice, watching anxiously as a couple more Tyrsians stepped out of the ship to engage in a furious debate with Hent, while Martin hopped around trying to get a word in edgeways. "They do have larger problems, though, and they'll know we can't get far, so they might not get around to launching a full scale search for us just yet – but we'll still need to move fast."

 "Larger problems?"

 If they moved now, would that movement be spotted, as they dashed from behind these crates back around that corner? Or were they far enough away to escape undetected? No one was looking in their direction currently, all seemingly engrossed in their argument over what to do, and it wasn't far, with thick brambles to duck behind, so if they were going to make a run for it, get well out of sight before any search could be launched, now might just be the best chance they were going to get.

 "I'll tell you all about it in a minute," said Liz. "Right now, though, I think we should make a run for it, quick, while they're not looking."

 

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Something was wrong.

 According to the information Sarah had prised out of young Henderson, she was approaching the location Harry's phone call had come from, and according to her map there should be some kind of industrial complex there…but something definitely wasn't right because she was almost on top of it now yet she couldn't see anything.

 It didn't help that it was so dark out here in the middle of nowhere – almost creepy, the area was so deserted. She'd been driving along this pot-holed little access road for well over a mile now without passing so much as a hint of civilisation, not even a lamppost to light the way.

 The road ran out just as it reached a hefty-looking fence that disappeared off into the gloom in either direction. There was driveway leading in via a large double gate, which was chained shut, and behind it…?

 Sarah squinted, trying to make out some kind of detail – any kind of detail, in fact.

 Nothing. She couldn't see anything. There was the fence and then there was just featureless murk where the map told her a building should be.

 She was definitely in the right place. There was nothing wrong with the map and there was nothing wrong with her navigational skills. It was the location that was wrong.

 Leaving her headlights on to provide a bit of light, she got out of the car to take a closer look and pressed herself up against the fence trying to see. It was hard to be sure, in the dark of the night, but there seemed to be a hazy kind of quality to the air just behind the fence. Was that the reason she couldn't see any further? If only it were light enough to get a proper look.

 There was a gap in the fence, just a few feet along from the gate. Sarah eyed it speculatively for a moment. She should really wait for UNIT to get here – but who knew how long that might be?

 She'd been waiting for UNIT all day. She wasn't prepared to wait any longer.

 She squeezed through the gap in the fence and began to hurry forward – only to collide with what felt like a brick wall and end up in a breathless heap on the floor, instead.

 A forcefield. Oh, well that was just perfect.

 Sarah scrambled back to her feet, grumbling to herself that she was going to have bruises in the morning, and took a cautious step or two forward, arm stretched out before her to feel for the invisible barrier she'd run into. She stopped as soon as she felt the first warning crackle of energy at her fingertips and then surveyed the scene critically. That hazy quality about the forcefield and the way it obscured her view of the building she knew lay behind it was something she'd never seen before. How it might look by light of day she couldn't tell, but as it was, under cover of darkness, if she hadn't seen the structure on the map and didn't know that was where Harry had called from, she'd have sworn that there was nothing there at all.

 It was a very effective disguise. It was also a very effective barrier.

 She looked around, trying to decide what to do now. There was still no sign of UNIT. At length she decided to be methodical about it. She couldn't get in and she wasn't about to turn around and go back home, so all that was left was exploring the area in search of clues or an alternate way in or something. She went back to the car and turned the headlights off, not wanting to drain the battery, fished a rather feeble torch out of the glove compartment, then picked a direction at random and started walking, staying inside that narrow zone between the perimeter fence and the forcefield.

 She'd barely even started when there was a sudden snap and a sizzle as the forcefield shorted out, revealing the looming bulk of the old factory some distance behind. She almost jumped out of her skin with surprise and quickly glanced around, feeling horribly exposed all of a sudden.

 There was no one and nothing in sight.

 For a moment, everything was still and silent, and then loud shouting erupted from somewhere out of sight, behind the building. Not wanting to be caught out in the open like this, Sarah promptly ran for cover, diving behind a stack of crates nearby. She took a moment to catch her breath before starting to look around to gauge her next move – and felt her jaw drop open with surprise because Harry and Liz were crouched behind another stack of crates just a few feet away, staring back at her in equal astonishment.

 She started to get up again to run over to them, but by then Harry was already on his way over to her, Liz at his heels. "What on Earth are you doing here, old girl?" he hissed in a piercing whisper as he joined her behind her stack of crates.

 Typical Harry. Sarah rolled her eyes. "Looking for you, of course, you idiot. Why else do you think I'd be here? Are you all right?"

 He looked all right, considering he'd been in a crumpled heap on the floor the last time she saw him. There was blood on his shirt and he had a few cuts on his face, heavily scabbed over, but he seemed to be otherwise intact. His brow was furrowed as if he had a headache and he looked a bit tired, perhaps, as did Liz…but then again it was the middle of the night now, so Sarah was probably looking a bit tired herself – she certainly felt it.

 "Yes, yes, fine." He peered around, as if expecting to see someone else. "I say, you're not on your own, are you? What happened to UNIT?"

 She rolled her eyes again. "On their way, I hope. They were a bit tied up negotiating with the Atarons when I left?"

 Harry frowned. "Negotiating with the what?"

 "Atarons," Liz chipped in, "The other aliens, the ones who are looking for this lot. I did tell you about it, if you remember." While Harry murmured, 'oh yes, that's right', Liz turned to Sarah. "Have they made contact with UNIT, then?"

 "Sort of," Sarah explained. "They sent out a kind of global broadcast to demand we surrender the fugitives they're after, and the Brigadier got his communication people to reverse the call, so to speak. They wanted to send a search party down and he was trying to stop them."

 "I see." Liz glanced around worriedly. "Well, we can't stay here. The Tyrsians know we've escaped and they know the forcefield is down: they'll be panicking."

 "Yes, what happened to the forcefield?" Sarah wondered. "It was there one moment, gone the next."

 "Oh, that was Liz," Harry told her, "Sabotaged one of their receptor thingies – dreadfully clever."

 "It won't be so clever if they find us here," Liz pointed out. "Is your car nearby, Sarah?"

 "Yes, it's just back that way…" Sarah began, but her voice trailed off as she realised that returning to her car would take them nearer to where the aliens, the Tyrsians, had gathered to loudly discuss the malfunction of their forcefield; they were still out of sight, around the corner of the building, but she could hear them ranting from all the way back here. "I don't think they'll see us if we run for it," she hesitantly offered, wishing she could be certain.

 "But we'll need to move fast," Liz nodded. "Come on."

 "Wait, listen," Sarah hissed as a sound caught her ears.

 "Engines," said Liz, listening intently.

 Harry lifted an eyebrow. "Our UNIT reinforcements, perhaps?"

 "Well, I should hope so," said Sarah. "It's about time they got here."

 In no time at all, the night was lit up by headlights as a collection of UNIT vehicles bore down on the site and came to a halt just outside the fence, close to where Sarah had left her car. A squad of soldiers jumped out and started cutting through the fence to gain access.

 Liz sighed and shook her head. "They don't believe in subtlety, do they?" she muttered. "For all they know, they could have signed our death warrant, announcing their arrival like that."

 "We'd better let them know we're here," murmured Harry, but before they could move to join their colleagues, the Tyrsians appeared around the side of the building – and started firing at the UNIT troops. The troops promptly fell back and returned fire and that was the end of any hope they had of dashing the hundred or so yards that separated them from UNIT's protection, as they would have to enter the field of fire to do so. All they could do was sit tight and wait for the shooting to stop.

 A stray blast from one of the Tyrsians caught one of the crates at the top of the stack they were sheltering behind, and Sarah couldn't quite hold in a yelp as it missed her head by no more than a couple of inches.

 "Over there, quick," Harry urged and the three of them ran, stooping low for whatever shelter they could find behind thick brambles, and flung themselves behind another heap of junk, nearer to the building but slightly safer from the ongoing gun battle.

 From here, Sarah could just about make out the tail end of the Tyrsian spaceship, parked on the ground just around the corner. A cluster of Tyrsians was gathered around it, focused intently on their battle with the UNIT troops, and behind them…

 "Who's that?" she wondered. There was a man, a human, sneaking away from the Tyrsian line, keeping tight to the wall.

 She assumed at first that he was another prisoner, trying to escape, but Liz frowned and said, "That's Dr Martin – what's he up to now?"

 "Perhaps we should find out," Harry suggested.

 Liz nodded. "Yes, perhaps we should."

 The man – Dr Martin – had entered the building via a side door not too far from where they were hiding…not too far from where they were hiding, but they still had to leave that hiding place and dash across alarmingly open ground to follow him, with a gun battle raging nearby. They waited for a slight lull in the shooting before risking it, but even so, Sarah's heart was pounding like a jackhammer as she sprinted across those few yards, expecting to be hit at any moment. As soon as they were inside, she immediately felt safer. Just having the noise of the gunfire muted slightly was a relief.

 There was no sign of which way Dr Martin might have gone once he entered the building.

 "He'll have headed back to the hall," said Liz, "To check on the device."

 Harry nodded. "Yes, I'd imagine so – it's this way. I think."

 "Wait, what device?" Sarah wanted to know as they cautiously made their way through the dark, musty hallway.

 "A stolen time travel device," Liz told her.

 "One they don't even know how to work properly," added Harry.

 "A time travel device?" That…made sense of so many elements of the case that had been puzzling Sarah. "That would explain Tom, then," she mused – and then had to explain who Tom was and where he came from.

 Harry had been leading the way, but came to a standstill as the corridor branched off in two directions. "I think it's this way," he said, looking uncertain. "But I'm afraid I'm not entirely sure."

 Liz frowned. "Yes, I think that way as well, but we'd better be certain. Perhaps we should split up. You two carry on down there, and I'll have a quick look this way, to be on the safe side, and then catch up with you."

 It seemed a reasonable plan. Sarah and Harry continued along the murky hallway, and within moments Harry was looking more assured. "Ah yes, this is starting to look a bit more familiar. I believe the main hall should be just through here."

 "Careful," Sarah warned as he reached for the door. "We don't know what's in there."

 He was very cautious as he pushed the door open just a fraction to peek through into the room beyond

 "I don't think he's here," he murmured as he pushed the door a little wider and very warily stepped through. Sarah followed, looking around with interest as she found herself in an enormous room that must have once been the factory floor, now derelict and deserted, empty save for an assortment of weird-looking machinery over against one wall. There was no sign of Dr Martin.

 And then, all of a sudden, there was. The man popped up from behind a console like a jack-in-the-box and jabbed frantically at the controls.

There was a brilliant flash of purpley-blue light and a surreal sensation of being pulled off her feet…followed by darkness.

 


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sarah and Harry have been thrown into the past with no way home, how will they cope? Meanwhile back at UNIT, Liz is the only person who stands any chance of saving them, but how will she handle the pressure?

  Liz stared in horror.

 The corridor she'd taken had led her back to the storage area she'd first escaped into, and she'd reached the door that led back into the main hall just in time to see, through the grubby little viewing pane, Harry and Sarah cautiously entering the room through the other door.

 Dr Martin was hiding behind the console of the time travel device and they hadn't seen him. She had no way to warn them – by the time she started pushing at the door, which was jammed again, it was already too late.

 The machine was already set up for a test. All Martin had to do was press the right button and a portal opened up right in front of Harry and Sarah. No chance of escape, they were sucked into it in seconds. A moment later, the portal closed again, as if it had never been there – and they were also gone as if they had never been there.

 Heart pounding furiously, Liz began to shove frantically against the door. When it finally flew open beneath her assault she almost fell into the room and Martin whirled around and stared at her with wide, mad eyes.

 She was safe on this side of the room – manipulating the lock on where the portal would open took too much fine control for him to be able to move it from one end of the room to the other at speed. Liz took a wary step or two toward him. "What have you done?"

 "It's not my fault. It's all going wrong. This is mine! I found it!" he petulantly yelled.

 Another step closer. "We can still undo this, it's not too late," she urged, watching him closely – for as long as he didn't touch the controls again, didn't lose the lock at the other end, there was still a chance they could retrieve the others. "Help me get my friends back and I'll put in a good word for you, I promise."

 For a moment he appeared to be seriously considering her offer. Just for a moment. Then he shook his head, snatched up that heavy Tyrsian tool she'd hit him with earlier and flung it across the room toward her, and then ran for the exterior door.

 Liz let him go as she sprinted across the room to the console…but then pulled up short when she reached it, at a loss to know what to do now. She didn't dare touch any of the controls. She'd had only a couple of hours of rather inadequate instruction in its use from operators who were far from being experts themselves, and knew just enough to know that she didn't know nearly enough to be able to operate it. She could study the device for a year and still not understand the finer principles behind it, and the controls were exceptionally delicate. Make the wrong move now, and she could ruin any chance they might have of retrieving Harry and Sarah from wherever they were. She couldn't afford to rush into anything – _they_ couldn't afford for her to rush into anything.

 She didn't dare attempt any retrieval on her own. Dr Martin had to be brought back and made to help – better still, Rahl too. He was enough of a scientist that he'd do it, as well, just for the chance to experiment with and test the device a little more, if only he could be captured or some kind of ceasefire negotiated.

 Speaking of ceasefires, it had gone quiet – the sound of gunfire from outside had stopped.

 Martin had left the exterior door open. Liz made her way over to it and took a cautious look around before even more cautiously stepping outside to see what was happening.

 Post-battle, the scene was one of chaos. The spaceship was still there, but there was no sign of the Tyrsians, apart from a single alien body sprawled in the dust. The UNIT troops were re-grouping, several of them lying around in so many unconscious heaps on the ground, and there was another body lying about halfway between the building and the spaceship.

 Liz felt sick. It was Dr Martin and he was dead, sightless eyes staring toward her, almost accusingly, while his blood stained the earth around him.

 So much for any hope she'd had of persuading the man to cooperate with Harry and Sarah's retrieval. How was she supposed to get them back now?

 "Miss Shaw! Thank goodness. Are you all right?" Sergeant-Major Benton appeared in front of her, all agitation and concern.

 She silently pushed past him and walked, almost in a daze, over to the single Tyrsian corpse lying nearby. It was Brask, her former patient, who'd disappeared off to the ship shortly after his revival and hadn't been seen since. He'd had no armour to protect him from UNIT's bullets, of course, because she and Harry had taken it off him back in sick bay, what felt like a hundred years ago now.

 "Miss Shaw?" Benton had followed her.

 "Harry will be upset," she rather distantly told him.

 He frowned. "What's that, Miss?"

 She chuckled, although it really wasn't funny, and could hear just the faintest note of hysteria beginning to creep into her voice as exhaustion crashed over her like a wave. "Did you know that nine out of ten doctors don't like to see recovering patients gunned down, even the ones who've proved hostile?"

 Benton glanced around, perplexed. "Where is Dr Sullivan, Miss? I've got wounded men I'd like him to take a look at."

 Miss. Everyone at UNIT called her 'miss' – they always had. Her title had been doctor when she first worked there and she was a professor now, yet still they all called her 'miss'. She'd never complained about it back then because at the time there had been larger battles to fight, and it was far too late to expect them to break the habit now, but it still grated, every time. Harry was the only UNIT officer she'd met so far who'd used her professional title as a matter of course.

 "He's gone," she told Benton, "Him and Sarah. And now that you've killed Dr Martin, I'm not sure I'm going to be able to get them back."

 "Dr Martin? You mean that man there? That was an accident; he caught a ricochet," said Benton, frowning. "What do you mean, Dr Sullivan's gone? And Miss Smith? I know she came here; her car's over at the gate."

 "They're both gone," Liz flatly repeated. "And I don't think I can get them back."

 

UNITUNITUNIT

 Gazing at the complex controls of the device, Liz took a deep breath and told herself that she could do this. She'd been shown how the device worked, in theory. She could do this. She needed to approach the problem methodically, that was all, and not think about the lives that were at stake. Begin at the beginning: gather information, analyse data, and eliminate variables, as if this were just another research project. As if this technology weren't impossibly, impenetrably alien.

 Rahl wasn't going to be any help. The unfortunate Brask aside, the Tyrsians had made good their escape in their land vehicle, which had a shroud device of its own, preventing pursuit – and also preventing detection, although UNIT were currently running around like so many headless chickens trying to track them down. Liz was on her own with this; if she couldn't work out how to use that device to retrieve Harry and Sarah, they would be lost forever.

 The responsibility settled on her shoulders like a lead weight. She couldn't allow herself to think about the other three people who'd been lost through those earlier portals, or the man who'd been pulled through from the past and was now stranded here. At least she stood a chance with Harry and Sarah because the controls hadn't been touched since they went through, which meant that the locational lock on the spatial-temporal point at which they came out should still be in place, allowing her to narrow down the search.

 "The hard part will be getting a fix on their biometric signal at the other end and operating the reversion to bring them back," she told Benton, who made a good show of looking keen and interested but was clearly none the wiser. "It is possible. I know it's possible – that was how the Tyrsians managed to retrieve Brask. It took them a lot of trial and error, though, and although they talked me through the procedure in principle, I wasn't shown precisely how they achieved it in practice."

 "Well, the Brigadier says to take as much time as you need to do it right," said Benton in a reassuring tone that set her teeth on edge because she was in no mood to be mollified, as if she were a skittish animal in need of cajoling in order to perform.

 "Do we have time, though?" she snapped. "With those Ataron creatures snapping at our heels to have the device returned?"

 "The Brigadier hasn't told them we've found it," Benton promptly replied. "Only that we're in active pursuit of the Tyrsian fugitives."

 "Well, that isn't true either," Liz scoffed. "We've no idea where they've gone. Perhaps we should tell the Atarons we've found their precious machine – they might be able to help us operate it."

 Benton shook his head at once, killing that nascent hope almost before it was born. "No, we've already asked – the Brigadier told them we'd lost people through portals and asked if they could help retrieve them, if we found the device. They got a bit sniffy about it, to tell you the truth – they reckon they're detectives, not technicians. Their job is to retrieve the device, not to operate it."

 Liz sighed. "They don't have anyone on board who can help?"

 "Doesn't sound like it, I'm afraid." Benton sounded every bit as disheartened as she felt. "Of course, we can't press them too hard, or they'll begin to suspect we've found something and demand it back at once."

 She groaned and let her head drop into her hands. It was hard to think, she was so tired.

 "The Tyrsians have a technician who's been working with the device for days now. If we could only track them down – preferably without further bloodshed – perhaps he could be persuaded to help," she suggested. She didn't like their chances, though, now that Brask had been killed. Whatever else they might be, the Tyrsians were protective of their own and would take his loss badly.

 "That's a big if," Benton ruefully replied. "They aren't showing up on radar – might as well have disappeared into thin air."

 "No, that shroud device of theirs conceals them from all scanners…" Liz began – and then realised what she was saying, remembered what Martin had told her, and felt a sudden surge of optimism. "Conceals them from _almost_ all scanners, that is. Mr Benton, Dr Martin told me that he'd built a very special kind of scanner, experimental. It allowed him to detect the Tyrsian ship when normal scanners couldn't, that's how he made contact with them. It was a secret project he was working on that his colleagues might not have known about, but if we can find it –"

 "We might be able to use it to track them down," Benton enthusiastically interrupted. "Good thinking, Miss. I'll notify HQ to get onto it at once."

 UNITUNITUNIT

 "Cup of tea, Miss Shaw?" Benton's voice seemed to boom out of nowhere.

 Liz sat upright with a jerk, dismayed to realise that she had fallen asleep on the job, and blinked muzzily at Benton a few times before she managed to speak. "What time is it?" Dawn, judging by the thin grey light streaming in through the windows and open door, and a glance at her watch confirmed it. "Why did you let me sleep?"

 "Not much more than a cat nap, really, and you needed the rest," he calmly replied, pushing a small plastic cup filled with standard issue army brew toward her along the top of the console she was sitting at. "No use to anyone, the state you were in – work yourself into the ground and we'll never get Dr Sullivan and Miss Smith back."

 Leaning back in her chair and rolling her shoulders to stretch out the stiffness in her spine after sleeping in such an awkward position, she was all set to argue the point further…but then he produced a sandwich to go with the tea and her stomach gurgled loudly at the sight of it. She hadn't realised just how hungry she was.

 A sandwich and a cup of tea wasn't much, but she felt much better once she'd polished them off, almost human again, aside from a lingering ache behind her eyes that was the ongoing legacy of the Tyrsian stun weapon. Benton was right: she had been in no fit state to carry on working, exhausted as she'd been. That was how mistakes were made and she couldn't afford to make any mistakes on this. A couple of hours hunched uncomfortably over a console might not be the most restful night's sleep she'd ever had, but she would at least be a bit more clear-headed to return to her work now.

 Benton looked as if he'd benefit from a few hours' sleep himself, come to that.

 "Did I miss anything?" Liz demanded. A lot could happen in a couple of hours.

 "Well, we've found Dr Martin's secret experimental scanner," said Benton. "There's a team there now, looking it over – the Brigadier wondered if you might like to join them?"

 It was tempting – Martin's scanner sounded interesting enough that she'd like to see it at some point, to see what modifications and improvements he'd made over standard equipment – but she shook her head. "No, your radar operators are more than experienced enough. I won't be able to contribute anything more than they can and I've enough to do here, if we're to have any hope of getting Harry and Sarah back. We've lost enough time as it is."

 Benton fidgeted awkwardly for a moment, looking as if he wanted to say something, so she waited for him to spit it out. "I should have kept a closer eye on Miss Smith," he said at last, looking upset, "Should've known she'd get herself into trouble."

 So he was blaming himself for Sarah's predicament. Well, Liz could sympathise, but this was neither the time nor the place for misplaced guilt. "Oh, come on now, Mr Benton," she protested. "You couldn't have known she would come charging out here all by herself."

 He shook his head, wearing a rueful expression. "Let's just say it isn't exactly out of character. Trouble is, we're so used to her being around, helping out – sometimes we forget she's a civilian. I should have known, should have been more careful. She was worrying herself silly about you all day."

 "Well, I'm sure she was concerned about me, as I am about her now," said Liz, beginning to pull together the scattered notes she'd been working on during the night. "But since we've only just met, I imagine it was Harry she was worried about, really. They seem quite close."

 Benton shrugged. "I daresay they have been in fairly close cahoots since Miss Smith got back – comparing notes, I suppose."

 Liz was curious. "Comparing notes on what?" She'd heard a few references now to Sarah having only recently returned from some kind of trip or other, but wasn't sure what Harry had to do with it. "I gathered she's been away recently."

 Benton looked surprised. "Dr Sullivan didn't tell you?"

 "Tell me what?"

 "About him and Miss Smith going off with the Doctor for a spin in his TARDIS," he said, still in that faintly surprised tone, as if he thought it should be obvious.

 Liz blinked at him in surprise. Harry had told her that the TARDIS was fully operational by the time he met the Doctor – what had he said? Something about it working a little too well – but she hadn't realised quite how first-hand his experience of that was; she'd been able to imagine too many other ways in which the Doctor could have made a nuisance of himself with a functioning TARDIS, given what he'd been like while it was still disabled. "No," she said at last. "No, he didn't mention that."

Benton rolled his eyes. "I don't suppose it would have occurred to him to say anything."

 Liz thought about what she knew of Harry, having spent much of the last two days with him, and had to agree. "No, you're probably right there. Well, that explains rather a lot. How long were they away?"

 "Well, that depends who you ask," said Benton. "Dr Sullivan swears it was no more than a few weeks, at most, but by our reckoning it was more like months. And Miss Smith went off with the Doctor quite a few times, all told. I don't reckon she even knows how long she was away, in the end."

 That rather confusing, contradictory statement made a lot more sense when you remembered the Doctor's claim that his ship, his TARDIS, could travel through time as well as space. Liz's belief in those claims had always been rather abstract, since the TARDIS had never been functional during her acquaintance with the Doctor, but the reality of what it could do and what that might mean was becoming very apparent now. Harry and Sarah's trip away in it had been considerably more than just a 'spin', it was clear – several trips for Sarah, apparently, which also meant several trips away for the Doctor before he left for good.

 "The Brigadier can't have been happy," she mused. For all that he'd butted heads with the Doctor constantly, the Brigadier had also relied on him heavily in his guise as scientific advisor – and chief medical officer was also a fairly important role to be away for months at a time, for that matter.

 "Well, no," Benton agreed. "Miss Smith doesn't work for us, of course, but he did used to get a bit sniffy about the Doctor whisking staff members off without so much as a by-your-leave."

 Staff members plural, Liz noted. So Harry wasn't the only UNIT officer to have taken a trip in the Doctor's TARDIS, then. Would he have taken her, she wondered, if she had stayed just a little longer – how long _had_ it taken him to fix it, in the end? It was pointless dwelling on what might have been, however. "I can imagine," she said. "I remember how it was even before the Doctor got his TARDIS working again."

 And now the Brigadier had lost his medical officer again – and it was up to her to retrieve him. There was no Doctor here to work any improbable miracles this time.

 "How long have we got?" she asked.

 Benton looked uncomfortable. "They gave us twenty-four hours," he admitted.

 "Twenty-four hours – or what?"

 "Twenty-four hours and then they'll start sending search parties down here to rip the land apart until they find that device and those fugitives." He shrugged. "Could be we'd be able to fend them off, but…"

 "But we'd like to avoid war if at all possible," Liz finished for him. "Twenty-four hours from when?"

 "Last night," he said, checking his watch. "That's…just over sixteen hours left, now."

 "Sixteen hours…" And here she'd been wasting time on idle chit-chat for the last ten minutes. Liz felt the weight of responsibility settle on her shoulders again, oppressive and stifling, and tried to assure herself that she was up to the task. She had to be, because there was no one else. "I'd better get back to work, then."

 

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The first thing Sarah became aware of was a pain at her temples as if someone was snapping elastic bands inside her head, which had been stuffed with cotton wool. Her mouth felt dry, her tongue heavy and thick, and when she tried to open her eyes they felt crusted up with sand.

 In short, it was one of the more unpleasant awakenings of her life, although far from the worst.

 Her face was pressing against something moist, and when she finally managed to prise her eyes open she discovered that it was earth and leaf mould, damp from what seemed to be recent rainfall. She was sprawled in a heap, face down with limbs akimbo, atop what had to be years' worth of mulch and twigs, surrounded by trees. Lots and lots of trees.

 Movement nearby alerted her to the fact that she wasn't alone and she turned to see Harry sitting up, holding his head and rubbing his eyes. Rolling onto her back, she opened her mouth to speak…but no sound came out – it took a few attempts before she finally found enough voice to say hello.

 The corners of Harry's lips twitched in an approximation of a smile. "'Lo, Sarah," he hoarsely muttered.

 So they were each feeling about as awful as the other, then, clearly. It must have been some trip.

 "How long were we out?" she wondered aloud. Daylight was shining through the branches overhead. It had been the middle of the night, the last she remembered.

 "No idea, I'm afraid," Harry very tiredly replied.

 Pushing herself up to a semi-sitting position, Sarah groaned. "I would ask what happened, but I'm afraid I remember what happened. There was a time travel device and there was a portal, and now we're…" Panic began to flutter in her stomach and she fiercely pushed it back down. She wasn't going to panic. Not until she knew there was definitely something to panic about. "Any idea where we are?"

 "Well," said Harry, looking around, "We appear to be in some kind of wood."

 "Yes, I can see that much for myself, thank you, Harry."

 "Well, you asked," he pointed out, and then said, "I suppose we should try to get our bearings. Do you feel up to exploring?"

 Sarah thought about trying to stand and her head started to spin. "Oh, someone's banging a drum inside my head. Just give me a minute."

 Harry evidently wasn't feeling any better than she was, since he simply nodded and then flopped onto his back and threw an arm over his eyes. "You know, I'm getting rather tired of this."

 "Tired of what?"

 "Being knocked out," he said, voice slightly muffled by the sleeve across his face. "Three times in a day really seems a bit much."

 "Three times?" She knew about two, but not the third – but then, he'd been a prisoner for hours, so anything could have happened during that time. "Are you sure you're all right?"

 "Oh, I'll live." He was looking a bit pinched around the eyes still as he sat up again, but said no more about it. "Ready to move, old thing?"

 No, she didn't feel at all ready to start moving, but nodded anyway. "Well, we can't just sit here all day, can we?"

 Standing up felt like a full scale epic adventure in and of itself, and was immediately followed by an exciting sequel entitled 'which way should we go now?' They were in the middle of a particularly dense thicket of what appeared to be a particularly dense wood, with nothing to indicate in which direction civilisation might lie.

 Always supposing there was such a thing as civilisation, wherever they were – whenever they were.

 Neither one of them was voicing that fear aloud, though, not yet, anyway – just as they also weren't talking about the fact that they'd been hurled through time with no way of getting back home. Sarah's mind shied away from even thinking about it, never mind speaking it out loud. One problem at a time. They would get their bearings and then worry about…well, about everything else.

 They picked a direction more or less at random and started walking, picking their way through scrubby undergrowth and past low-hanging branches. The dense tree cover around them began to thin out almost at once and they soon stumbled upon a path – unpaved and very uneven, but still a path: well-trodden and clearly defined.

 A path meant people and people meant some form of civilisation, at the very least.

 "What do you think?" Harry asked, "Left or right?"

 "Left," Sarah decisively replied. Left looked more inviting, somehow.

 "Left it is."

 They started walking again, occasionally catching glimpses through the trees of nearby fields and hedgerows, as they followed the path.

 "It's so quiet," Sarah murmured, looking around with wonder. "Listen, there's no traffic noise at all, only birds." The birdsong was surprisingly loud, too, with nothing to drown it out. "No cars, no trains, no aeroplanes…" Glancing down at the muddy little track they were following, she added, "No tarmac."

 "Clean, too," Harry nodded. "No litter."

 "It reminds me a bit of the Earth we visited in the future, after the time of the solar flares – do you remember?" He'd liked the lack of litter there, as well. "That was peaceful and unspoiled, just like this."

 "It wasn't quite so peaceful once that Sontaran showed up," Harry remarked, missing the point completely.

 "We could be anywhere." Sarah suddenly felt cold. "The past, the future – anywhere."

 Harry had his mouth open to say something but then shut it again and glanced around, looking wary. "Did you hear that?"

 "Someone's coming!"

 Should they stay and meet whoever it was, take the opportunity to maybe find out where they were? Or should they hide, in case wherever they were turned out to be dangerous and its people hostile?

 They'd both spent too much time travelling through time and space with the Doctor to not be cautious – for all they knew, the assembled hordes of Genghis Khan could be just around the corner. They hid.

 A couple of men in similar costume to Tom Craddock came ambling past, chatting among themselves. Not so dangerous after all, then. Well, presumably.

 "Excuse me!" Sarah quickly jumped out of the bush they'd been hiding behind and called after the men as she hurried down onto the path again, ignoring Harry's protest as he stumbled after her.

 The men were startled by their sudden appearance, to say the least, so she flashed her most winning smile at them and hoped they wouldn't ask too many questions.

 "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to startle you. My friend and I seem to be a bit lost – do you think you could point us in the direction of the nearest town, please?"

 The two were eyeing her knee-length corduroy skirt somewhat askance – whenever this was, and their clothes were surely a clue, short skirts were clearly a fashion faux-pas – and their eyes also flicked to the spots of blood on Harry's shirt, clearly visible beneath his unbuttoned uniform jacket, but they answered amiably enough. "You've a way to go to find a town, Miss, but if you follow this path along the way we've just walked, you'll come upon Lower Tarrow. Will that do you?"

 "Is it far?" Harry asked.

 "Oh, no more'n four miles, sir."

 "Lower Tarrow?" That rang a bell – and when Sarah remembered where she'd heard the name before, the realisation hit like a tonne of bricks. "I don't suppose you happen to know a man named Tom Craddock, do you?"

 Both men frowned and looked suspicious. "How do you know Tom Craddock, Miss?"

 That…wasn't an easy question to answer, at least not honestly. "We met very briefly, just once," she hesitantly offered. "He mentioned that he came from a place called Lower Tarrow."

 The younger of the two men narrowed his eyes. "Thomas Craddock has not been seen these past five days," he said. "Do you know where he is?"

 Yes, she did. But she could no more bring him back here than she could return there herself, and explaining any of that was impossible. She shook her head and said, "No, I'm afraid not," and both men looked disappointed.

 "I did hear talk of monsters and brigands in the woods hereabouts," said the older man. "Although I've seen none mysel'. So you might want to watch yourself, Miss, as you travel – and you, sir," he nodded at Harry, who was keeping quiet and looking confused.

 "We will. Thank you," Sarah assured him, and the two men doffed their caps in farewell before continuing on their way. She watched them go and then turned back to Harry, who was regarding her quizzically, eyebrows raised.

 "Well? What was all that about?"

 All that had been about finding out where they were – _when_ they were…and now that she knew the panic was beginning to bubble up again, like acid churning in her stomach. It had been easier to ignore the problem before, to put off worrying about it until they knew more, but now she could no longer deny the larger issue, which was that they were trapped. They had been thrown into the past and had no way of getting back home.

 "Harry, do you remember I told you about Tom Craddock, the man who came through one of those fissures, or time portals, or whatever they are – the Brigadier brought him to UNIT just after you were taken in that raid." He nodded and she hastened to explain further, the words tumbling out in her rush to share what she knew. "Tom told me he came from the year 1834. And that's here – those men knew him, they said he'd been missing five days. This is 1834, Harry. We're in 1834."

 

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 They carried on walking. There was nothing else to do and the nearby village of Lower Tarrow was as good a destination as any. It gave them something to focus on, a goal to aim for – a distraction, however slight, from their predicament.

 "Liz had a good look at that device, you know," said Harry as they picked their way past another muddy puddle. "She told me about it. They wanted her help, so they showed her how it works. She'll be able to operate it and pull us back, I'm sure.

 He sounded very confident. Sarah only wished she could feel half as certain. "Do you really believe that, or are you just trying to make me feel better?"

 There was a slight pause.

 "I'm trying to make _me_ feel better," he admitted at length, "This time travel malarkey seemed a precarious enough business even with the Doctor at the helm."

 Sarah had travelled halfway around the universe and back with the Doctor, had had all kinds of adventures with him, but never, in all that time and in all those travels, had she felt trapped like this, so far from home. They'd got into all kinds of scrapes, equal parts terrifying and horrifying and exhilarating, but even when things had been at their very worst, even when they'd been separated from the TARDIS, she'd never doubted for a moment that the Doctor would get her home again, somehow, in the end.

 But the Doctor wasn't here. It was 1834 and they were stranded with nothing but the clothes they stood up in.

 "What if she can't," she hesitantly began, reluctant to speak her fear out loud yet also needing to get it out in the open. "What if Liz can't operate the machine, can't get us back? What would we do?"

 Harry stopped walking and scratched his head, looking unhappy, and then wandered off the path to lean against a nearby tree, staring off into the distance. "I suppose," he eventually said, keeping his back turned so that she couldn't see his face, "We'd just have to…well, stay out of the way of history, in that case. If it came to it."

 He made it sound so easy. Sarah felt hot all of a sudden, hot and angry and resentful. "Oh, it's all right for you, you're a doctor. That's a respectable profession in any century. You know, you told me once that if you had the money you'd buy yourself out of the Navy and set up a quiet little practice in the country. Maybe this is your big chance." She sounded bitter and she knew it. "You can introduce modern techniques – astound everyone by being ahead of the curve."

 Harry didn't turn around, so she couldn't tell if he'd noticed the sourness of her tone or not, but he sounded perfectly unruffled. "I'm not sure that would fall under the heading of staying away from history, Sarah."

 "And you're a man," she groused, on a roll now, because she'd been trying to remember whatever little she'd ever known about the role of women in early 19th century society, and what she remembered she didn't like. "They'll take you seriously whether you deserve it or not. But what am I supposed to do? Somehow I don't think there were that many openings for female investigative journalists in 1834!"

 "It'll be all right, Sarah." Harry had turned to regard her worriedly. "We'll stick together."

 "I don't know how you can be so calm." If she was going to panic, and it was clear that she was, the least he could do was relax that stiff upper lip enough to panic with her. "We could be stranded here for the rest of our lives!"

 Stranded for the rest of their lives…the enormity of it was overwhelming.

 Harry looked pensive. "Do I seem calm to you?"

 "Yes!" Annoyingly so.

 He studied his fingers for a moment. "I don't feel very calm, I must say."

 It was actually rather ridiculous, how much better she felt just for hearing that quiet admission. She drew in a deep breath, forced herself to calm down. They were both in this, for better or for worse, and there was nothing either one of them could do to change their situation. "We'll stick together," she agreed, repeating his words of reassurance back at him. "It'll be all right."

 Harry nodded and appeared to find his shoes fascinating and they fell silent for a moment. Then Sarah reached out and grabbed his hand and gave it a quick squeeze.

 "Do you really think Liz might be able to get us back?"

 Harry looked pensive again. "I'm certain she'll try," he said.

 

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 The light was beginning to fail and it was raining by the time the path led them out from among the trees into open countryside, with a few buildings coming into view on the horizon up ahead, signalling that they had almost reached their destination. Sarah huddled into her coat, glad that she'd thought to put it on when she dashed out of UNIT headquarters, and felt sorry for Harry, who only had his uniform jacket for protection against the elements and was looking increasingly miserable.

 "We're nearly there," she quietly observed, breaking the silence that had fallen over them as they trudged along. What might happen next was rather an unnerving prospect, because if Liz wasn't able to retrieve them, if there really was no way home, then this could be the start of the whole of the rest of their lives…and they were effectively destitute. "So what do you suppose are our chances of persuading someone to offer us food and shelter?"

 "To be honest," said Harry with a sigh, "I'd settle for a glass of water, at this point – absolutely parched."

 Up ahead, Lower Tarrow lay nestled among the surrounding fields and woods. Sarah could make out the shape of a squat stone church, while clustered around it were white-washed cottages that probably dated back to Tudor times – and she could see something else, too, right on the outskirts of the village.

 "Well, that I think we may actually be able to achieve," she observed, squinting to get a better look. "Does that look like a well to you?"

 Harry brightened up. "It does indeed. Well spotted, Sarah."

 They picked up the pace now that they had water in their sights. "And when we get there," Sarah decided, "I think you should do the talking."

 Harry was both surprised and dubious. "You do? Why me?"

 "Because you've got a uniform, a rank and a professional title – I'm not even decently dressed, by their standards," she pointed out, frustrated just at the thought of it. "And if we do end up stuck here for any time, it'll be handy if we can at least make a halfway decent first impression, so try not to stick your foot in it."

 She'd never worried what kind of impression she made when she was travelling with the Doctor, whether they were visiting the past, the future or a distant alien world. She'd blithely introduced herself as a time traveller – or as a space traveller, as the case may be – and it hadn't mattered if they believed her, not least because there was usually some kind of emergency going on to verify her story while the Doctor had been ample evidence in and of himself, and it also hadn't mattered if anyone thought she sounded mad, because she'd always known that they were only passing through. She'd never before faced the prospect of having to settle in some strange distant place and build some kind of life there. Here and now, imagining a possible future filled with corsets and crinolines was depressing beyond belief. It had been hard enough re-adjusting to life back on Earth in her proper timeline, never mind being stuck a century and a half in the past.

 There was someone already drawing water from the well when they got there, in spite of the rain: a teenage girl wearing a plain, full-skirted dress with an apron and shawl. She smiled at them as they approached and offered a polite "good day to you," while bobbing a curtsey – although again Sarah's short skirt came in for a bit of bemused attention – then gathered up her pail and trudged away with it, leaving the well free for them to pull up a bucket and drink their fill.

 They'd barely taken so much as a first sip from cupped hands when there was a yell and a clatter from just along the road as the girl slipped and fell, sending her bucket of water flying. Harry promptly flipped from damp dejection into medical professional mode with rather impressive speed, hurrying over to help the girl up and check for any injury, introducing himself with those magic words: "it's all right, I'm a doctor."

 Hanging back while a small crowd gathered, Sarah ruefully reflected that she'd been right – the combination of professional title and uniform, even an unfamiliar uniform spotted with blood, was all it took to buy instant respectability for Harry. Feeling more than a little out of place, by comparison, with her anachronistic outfit attracting more than a few stares and whispers, she was content to go along with the flow, for now, tagging along with the group as the girl was helped into the nearby vicarage, where Harry diagnosed a sprained ankle and prescribed rest, elevation and cold compresses.

 Someone volunteered to help the girl home, the crowd of locals dispersed, and suddenly Sarah found that she and Harry were alone in the vicarage with the woman who'd invited them in out of the rain to tend to the patient. A kindly, talkative soul who looked to be in her 40s, she was clad in voluminous skirts and sleeves, with greying ringlets tumbling about her face from beneath the neat little cotton mob cap she wore. Sarah felt decidedly underdressed and dishevelled alongside her, casting a rueful glance down at her short skirt and mud-splattered boots while quickly patting at her loose, wind-swept hair in a vain attempt at taming it.

 "What a dreadful to-do," the woman was saying, fluttering around like an anxious bird. "And so fortunate that you happened to be passing, doctor, for I am sure I do not know what we'd have done had you not been there, poor little Mary was so distressed, and then here we are and we have not even been properly introduced, what must you think of me. Miss Dinah Sutton – my brother William is Vicar for Lower Tarrow and the surrounding parish. He is from home just at present, but I expect him back tomorrow eve when I am sure he will be very glad to make your acquaintance, for we receive visitors so rarely these days."

 By the time this flow of words came to an end, Harry was looking a little dumbfounded, so Sarah stepped in. "We're very glad we were able to help, Miss Sutton. My name is Sarah Jane Smith and this is…" She faltered slightly just as she was about to introduce Harry – a single man and woman travelling alone together would probably be considered rather scandalous by 1834 standards, wouldn't it? "My brother," she offered as the most innocent sounding explanation she could come up with off the top of her head – quickly stepping on Harry's foot to encourage him to play along, since subterfuge of any kind did not come naturally to him.

 If nothing else, the look on Harry's face was well worth the minor falsehood. "Er…yes…er…" He floundered a little at first, but then rallied to introduce himself. "Surgeon-Lieutenant Harry…" Sarah was all set to jump in, but he remembered at the last moment not to say Sullivan, shooting a disgruntled glare at her as he tamely concluded, "Smith, Surgeon-Lieutenant Harry Smith."

 Miss Sutton seemed very impressed. "Oh my, a surgeon-lieutenant," she admiringly murmured, and then looked a little concerned. "Pardon my asking, but have you had some kind of accident, Lieutenant? And my dear, your attire," suddenly she was addressing Sarah and seemed almost distressed, rather than scandalised, at the thought of whatever might be the reason a young woman would be wandering around in a skirt that showed her knees, calves and ankles.

 Harry seemed a bit baffled by the question. Given everything that had happened in the last 24 hours, subjectively speaking, it was entirely possible that he had no idea he even had those scabby little cuts all over his face and spots of blood on his collar, from where that window had shattered all over him, back at UNIT yesterday morning and 140-odd years in the future.

 It was late in the day, the rain was getting heavier by the minute, and they were tired, cold and stranded in the past with nothing but the damp, travel-stained and anachronistic clothes they stood up in and the little bit of goodwill Harry had earned by tending that girl's sprained ankle. The truth of what had happened to them was something no sane person would believe. They needed a cover story, one that would explain both their destitute situation and Harry's cuts and scrapes, preferably without making them seem like desperate vagabonds. Remembering that the men they'd passed earlier had mentioned rumours of bandits operating in the area, Sarah made a rapid decision and then quickly took the plunge, before she had time to second guess herself.

 "We actually came to the village hoping to find rest and shelter, Miss Sutton, if you can point us toward some place that might be willing to put us up while we try to sort ourselves out. You see, we're visitors to the neighbourhood, just passing through, and we were attacked – by strange men with their faces hidden." Well, the Tyrsian aliens _were_ strange men who kept their faces hidden, in a manner of speaking. "My…brother tried to fight them off," this with a surreptitious glare and a kick at Harry's ankle by way of warning to wipe the startled expression off his face and back her up, "but I'm afraid they took everything we had and now…well, I don't quite know what we're going to do."

 As fabrications went, it was as close to the truth as she dared admit without mentioning time travel or aliens – and there was nothing fake at all about the little quaver that came into her voice in that last sentence, as she confessed her trepidation. If Liz didn't manage to retrieve them, if they found themselves stranded indefinitely, she really didn't know what they were going to do. What would it take to build some kind of life here, so far from everything and everyone they knew?

 "Oh, how dreadful!" gasped Miss Sutton, all sympathy and concern. "What a terrible ordeal, you poor things – how pale you look, and no wonder. There have been such stories lately as I never did hear: tales of bandits and highwaymen – monsters, even, the whole village is all a-flutter with it. The carpenter is gone missing quite without a trace and no one knows what is become of him, and now here you are, set upon along the road, what a to-do! We must call the constable! Oh, but we cannot, for he is a-bed just at present – gout, you understand, he suffers it quite fearfully, perhaps you might be willing to see him some time, doctor, and see what is to be done about it. Well then, you must stay here. Yes, yes, of course you must. I will not hear any arguments, no indeed – see how it rains still, you must not think of going out in such weather. You shall stay until you are able to set your affairs in order and that will be the end of it – here, now, sit and rest a while. How tired you must be. I will have Jane bring some supper to revive you. Oh, but look, you are quite soaked through, what a day this is. You will need dry clothes and you have none – all your luggage, stolen! We will find something to fit, I am quite sure. Sit and rest while I see what is to be found."

 The kindly little woman whirled out of the room, still chattering away to herself, leaving Sarah feeling slightly breathless, overwhelmed by such generosity – and a little guilty about the deception, necessary though it had been.

 "Sarah." Harry turned reproachful eyes on her as soon as they were alone.

 "Well, would you rather sleep in a ditch?" she defended. "We needed help and it isn't so far from the truth. We _were_ attacked and you did try to fight them off…just that it happened at UNIT headquarters, not on the road. And we _have_ lost everything, if we end up stuck here." She hadn't expected Miss Sutton to respond to her story with such effusive generosity, however; she'd simply hoped perhaps there might be some kind of inn in the village where payment wouldn't be demanded up front. "Look, I don't like imposing on her either, but one night can't hurt, just while we get ourselves sorted out – and we might not even be here that long, anyway. If Liz manages to get us back…"

 She couldn't finish the sentence. It was a big 'if' and she knew it.

 "At least you've still got your own name," Harry grumbled.

 "Well, you should have got in first, then, shouldn't you – then we'd both be Sullivans and I'd be the one complaining," Sarah lightly retorted.

 The arrival of the maid forestalled any further discussion of the rights and wrongs of their cover story, as she came bustling in bearing a tray laden with tea, bread, cheese and cold meat. Harry fell on the food as if he hadn't eaten in a week – those aliens, the Tyrsians, obviously hadn't believed in feeding their prisoners.

 "You can have my share, if you want," Sarah told him. "I'm not that hungry."

 Harry promptly stopped eating and turned a very serious expression upon her. "You really should try to eat something, old girl. You might need it later."

 Might need it later – meaning that they couldn't expect to live off the charity of strangers indefinitely, if they remained stranded here for any length of time.

 Sarah had never felt less like eating in her life, but tried to force down a few bites. "It won't come to that," she murmured, wishing she could believe it.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Trapped in the past, Sarah confides in Harry as they struggle to keep their spirits up, while Liz's attempt at retrieving them is interrupted by another alien attack - will UNIT get their defences in place in time?

"I don't mean to rush you, Miss Shaw, but we are running out of time."

 The Brigadier had turned up, in a highly agitated mood – just what was needed.

 Liz bit back the sharp retort that was on the tip of her tongue and asked instead how the hunt for the Tyrsians was coming along. "My work here would go a lot faster if their technician were able to help."

 Not that he was likely to be willing, of course.

 "No sightings yet," the Brigadier said with a frown. "But that scanner of Dr Martin's really is quite remarkable – or so I'm told. We'll be notified as soon as anything shows up."

 She rested her elbows on the console and massaged her temples, trying to think. Fatigue was setting in with a vengeance once more, despite the vast quantities of bitter-tasting UNIT issue caffeine she'd consumed over the course of the day. She couldn't afford to rest, though. There was no one to pick up the slack if she took a break – and as the Brigadier had so kindly reminded her, they were running out of time.

 "They've probably gone to ground already," she suggested. The Tyrsians would want to decide their next move, and what that might be was anyone's guess. They had nothing left to lose, after all.

 "Yes, and the Atarons are growing impatient – we won't be able to delay telling them we've found their machine for much longer."

 "Yes, I'm quite aware of that, thank you," she snapped. She'd been acutely conscious of the rapidly approaching deadline all day, without the Brigadier turning up to rub her nose in it.

 "Well then, what's taking so long?"

 Technology that this world had never seen before, with only a few scant hours to master it and no one to help, on next to no sleep, after being shot and abducted by aliens…and he had the gall to wonder what was taking so long? Liz glared at him in disbelief.

 "It's not like putting a car into reverse, Brigadier. This is alien technology, highly advanced. Would you like me to describe some of the principles involved, such as temporal coordinates and relative velocities, subjectivity and dimensional space-time?"

 "I'd rather you didn't, if it's all the same."

 "I thought you said the device was still locked onto the spot where it dropped them?" Benton interjected, looking confused.

 Liz sighed. "It is, but only in a manner of speaking. There are a lot of variables in motion, including Harry and Sarah themselves."

 "What does that mean?"

 It wasn't easy to explain a concept that she didn't fully understand herself – especially to military minds.

 "Imagine you've dropped a pin onto a moving conveyor belt. If you reach out to pick it up again even a second or two later, it will no longer be in the same place that it landed, because the conveyor belt is moving and the pin is moving with it. You have to look around first to see where it is now before you can retrieve it." It was far from an exact analogy, but it was the best she could come up with on the spur of the moment. "Now, this device is…" How best to describe it? "It's still pointing at the general coordinates where Harry and Sarah landed, it knows where it set them down, and it has a record of their biometric pattern, but it lost sight of them, so to speak, the moment the portal closed. Meanwhile, their timeline is moving, constantly, just as time is passing for us, which means they aren't at those exact coordinates any more, either spatially or temporally, so it has to locate them again and re-synchronise in order to pull them back."

 She paused to regard the two soldiers closely, to see if they were keeping up. Judging by their puzzled expressions, they weren't. She sighed again.

 "Look, all you really need to understand is that the device can't simply pull them back from the exact moment they landed, that's not how it works. It isn't that precise." Not for an inexperienced operator, at any rate, although she'd be prepared to bet that its Ataron creator could pull it off with ease. "I'm hopeful," now, anyway – it had been a different story only a few hours ago, "that I'll be able to fine tune it to within a matter of hours of their landing, but it's just as likely to be days, from their subjective point of view – possibly even weeks, although I really hope not to keep them waiting that long. It all depends on when – and that's when from their point of view – the device manages to latch onto their biometric signal."

 The Brigadier looked as if he'd been sucking on a lemon. "I see."

 "There's also the geographical variation to compensate for," Liz added.

 "Geographical?"

 "Well, given that time is passing for them, we can hardly expect them to simply stand still, can we?" she pointed out. "Granted, the journey through the portal causes a certain degree of neurological trauma, which would knock them out for some time, but as they recover they'll need to find food and shelter – they'll be moving about. I sincerely hope they'll stay together and not split up, but nonetheless that's another variable that I have to allow for, while calibrating an unfamiliar alien device to locate them in both time and space, across a divide of hundreds of years – rather like trying to retrieve that pin from the moving conveyor belt using a magnet tied to a long stick, in effect. It can be done, but it's clumsy and inefficient, especially if you've never attempted the manoeuvre before. And we need to get it right first time, we can't afford any mistakes. So I'm sorry if I'm not working fast enough for you, Brigadier, but I'm afraid it simply can't be helped!"

 He pursed his lips, expression rueful. "Rather like searching for a needle in a haystack, in fact."

 Well, if they were going to switch analogies, "I'd say more like panning for gold, Brigadier – in the ocean."

 He was clearly prepared to go to the wire on this, though. It had occurred to Liz several times during her long, frustrating hours of study that the simplest way of pacifying the increasingly impatient Atarons would be to admit that the device had been found and hand it over to them, before they started to get trigger-happy. The Brigadier wasn't prepared to do that, though, not while his people were missing with that machine the only means of retrieving them and not while they still had a bit of room to negotiate, with the deadline not yet elapsed – he was delaying because he trusted her to be able to use that time to master the alien technology and work a minor miracle. The time was fast approaching, however, when he was going to have to make a choice: delay further in hopes of eventually retrieving his lost people or surrender the device to the Atarons before they began to exact retribution upon the Earth for its theft. She could only hope she would be able to prevent him having to make that choice.

 Benton was looking curious. "How many hundreds of years?" he wondered. "I mean, can you tell, from that machine – does it tell you where they are? Or…when they are?"

 Good question. Liz turned back to the Brigadier. "That's actually something I wanted to talk to you about, Brigadier. I've been running some calculations, based on my interpretation of these read-outs. It's hard to be exact, but I've triple-checked the figures and I'd say they landed sometime in the mid 1830s."

 He looked startled. "The 1830s? That's where that chap Craddock came from."

 She nodded. "Yes, exactly. As I understand it, he was pulled through from the same approximate spatial-temporal coordinates as Brask – that's the Tyrsian who tested the device – and those coordinates were never altered, afterward, so when the portal re-opened, it came out in that same place."

 The Brigadier regarded her evenly for a moment. "Miss Shaw, are you trying to tell me that Lieutenant Sullivan and Miss Smith have landed in the same place that Craddock came from?"

 "Approximately," said Liz, "Yes. There'll be some variation, of course – a difference of a few days or weeks, perhaps, temporally speaking, maybe a few miles here or there. But it might be a good idea to bring Mr Craddock here, so that when I pull Harry and Sarah back through," and she was sticking firmly to that _when_ , not if, "He can go through in the other direction. It's the best chance he has of getting back where he belongs, or at least somewhere near to where he belongs." She hesitated before reluctantly adding, "But I'm afraid there's nothing I can do for the other people who were lost. I've interrogated the machine's data banks every way I know how, but I can't find any record of their biometric pattern to search for, or the coordinates they were sent to."

 Six people were known to have been displaced in time, all told. After hours of frantic study, she now felt that she had at least a halfway decent chance of getting three out of the six back where they were supposed to be, and fifty percent was a lot better than nothing…but nonetheless her inability to do anything for the other three tasted bitter. Whoever they were, and all she knew of them were the names she'd seen in the reports, they had deserved better.

 "I've got some final calculations to run," she concluded, "And I want to check the calibration again, but I will be ready to test the device soon."

 The Brigadier nodded, and his expression was surprisingly gentle. "I'll arrange to have Mr Craddock brought here at once."

 

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 Sarah and Harry retired for the night almost immediately after supper, in the end. The house was dark and gloomy, lit only by candlelight once the sun had gone down, and Sarah felt almost ridiculously exhausted, given how much of the day she must have spent unconscious in the woods, with a dull headache that hadn't faded from the moment she woke up, while Harry never had lost that pinched look around the eyes. He'd had a rough day even before getting sucked through that time portal.

 A good night's sleep in a proper bed worked wonders, though. After tossing and turning for a while, worrying about what the future might hold and convinced she would never manage to drop off, Sarah was surprised to wake up and find it was morning all of a sudden.

 There was a washbasin in a corner of the room, while the clothes that Miss Sutton had shown her last night were hanging on the front of the closet ready for her. She quickly freshened up and then found her way into the unfamiliar and unwieldy garments before making her way downstairs, feeling very self-conscious.

 Miss Sutton met her halfway. "Oh, good morning, Miss Smith, are you well? I trust you found the room comfortable, it is where my niece always sleeps when she visits, such a lovely girl. That dress was hers, you know, but she has quite outgrown it now, she is become so very tall. You look very well in it, I must say. And you are quite rested, are you? Oh, I am pleased. I shall go and tell Jane to have breakfast ready, now that you have risen. You will find your brother in the parlour."

 She was away again. Sarah closed her mouth, her greeting and thanks for the hospitality unspoken, impossible as it was to get a word in edgeways, and headed off in search of Harry.

 He was in the parlour, looking a little awkward in the clothes Miss Sutton had found for him, although not half as uncomfortable as Sarah felt in her borrowed frock, which had layer after layer of stiffly starched petticoat beneath an enormous hooped skirt, topped off with puffed sleeves and a lace collar. It was beautiful, but not exactly practical – the sort of thing you'd admire in a museum and then be glad you didn't have to wear, day after day…unless of course you happened to find yourself stranded in 1834.

 Still, if nothing else, the sight of her in it produced the first proper smile she'd seen on Harry's face since they got here.

 "Don't say a word," she warned. "I feel like I'm wearing a hot air balloon!"

 The smile grew broader and ever so slightly mischievous, but, "You look lovely," was all he said, judiciously enough.

 "Thank you." Sarah smiled back at him. "And you look almost as if you belong here. Anyone would think that suit had been made for you – you've definitely got the sideburns for it."

 It was meant as a joke, albeit a weak one – and a compliment, since the outfit really was a perfect fit, much better than her dress, he could definitely pass as a local – but Harry's smile faded at once. "Neither of us belongs here, Sarah."

 "No, I know that." She wasn't likely to forget any time soon. A heavy sigh escaped. "You know, dressing up like this would be a lot more fun if we could be sure it was only temporary."

 The not knowing was the worst part of it. If she knew for sure that this was only temporary, she would be enjoying the experience, walking through history, as it were – with no alien invasion to have to worry about, moreover, at least not in this time zone. Whatever might be going on back home still, there was nothing they could do about it from here. Conversely, if she knew that this definitely was permanent, she would be unhappy about it, certainly, but at least she could then set her mind to forming a proper plan of action. But doing so under these circumstances would feel like an admission of defeat, and so instead she was stuck in limbo. _They_ were stuck in limbo.

 "I just wish we knew, one way or the other," she sighed. "What exactly did Liz tell you about the device, again?"

 Harry wrinkled his nose. "Not a lot that made a great deal of sense to me – I'm not exactly a quantum physicist, you know. She said something about vectors and calibration, locking onto a signal."

 "A signal?" Sarah seized upon that detail at once. "So should we be sending a signal? What kind? And…how?"

 He shook his head helplessly. "Afraid I really don't know, old girl."

 In the wake of that tiny spark of hope, glumness came crashing down once again, heavier and harder than ever. "We don't have anything to signal with, anyway. Oh, I hate this. I hate not being able to do anything."

 Harry muttered something non-committal, his determined optimism of yesterday apparently evaporated overnight.

 "Oh, come on, buck up." Sarah gave him a little shoulder nudge by way of reassurance. They couldn't afford to both lose heart at the same time, after all. "You were the one telling me how certain you were Liz would get that portal re-opened for us, and…" A sudden notion occurred. "Harry, I've just thought of something –"

 "Breakfast is ready, Dr Smith, Miss Smith, if you'd care to come through." Miss Sutton came bustling into the room, cutting across what she'd been about to say.

 Portals, aliens and time travel weren't really something that could be discussed openly in front of the uninitiated. Anxious to share the idea she'd just had sooner rather than later, Sarah couldn't bring herself to do more than pick at her breakfast, fidgeting impatiently as she waited for an opportunity to talk to Harry alone again, too distracted by her thoughts to even attempt to follow the conversation as Miss Sutton chattered merrily away. Harry seemed to be keeping up, though, maintaining the good impression he'd already made – it seemed those old-fashioned manners of his were good for something, after all.

 They didn't get a chance to talk alone after breakfast, either. Word had got out that there was a doctor staying at the vicarage, and quite a number of people found excuses to drop in, all very friendly and welcoming. Most of them were just looking to keep up to speed with the gossip, visitors being such a rarity in the village, but one or two took the opportunity to mention this or that minor ailment that they wondered if the doctor might be willing to take a look at, during his stay…

 Harry looked heavy-eyed still, that furrow seeming to have taken up permanent residence in his brow – a good night's sleep evidently hadn't revived him as much as it had Sarah – but whatever else he might be, he was a doctor right down to the core of his being. It simply wasn't in him to turn away a patient in need of consultation, even in an unfamiliar time zone without any tools of the trade to hand.

 Sarah waited. The village had no doctor of its own, it seemed, the nearest lived eight miles away, which was a substantial journey by the standards of rural 1834, so she tried not to resent the imposition on their time. It was only fair that they give a little back, after receiving such generosity. Besides, she had said that they needed to make a good impression. If Liz couldn't get them back, if they really were stuck here for good, the friendships and goodwill forged today by Harry's willingness to doctor these strangers could prove invaluable.

 But.

 But she really needed to talk to him, away from all these people, sooner rather than later.

 But sitting idly by doing nothing while he worked was anathema to her. If this was what their future was likely to be like, she might just go mad.

 But she wanted to go home and needed, desperately needed, to feel that she was doing something, anything, that might help achieve it. Even though there was nothing she could do.

 She smiled and made polite conversation with each visitor, fiercely repressing the urge to scream her frustration, and seized upon the first opportunity to escape that arose. "Miss Sutton, it's been a real pleasure to meet so many of your neighbours this morning, but my brother and I really do need to attend to our business now – there's so much to do if we're going to put our affairs in order, you see."

 "Of course, of course, I quite understand."

 Five minutes later, they were on the doorstep, saying goodbye to their hostess, thanking her for her hospitality and agreeing that they were glad it wasn't raining again today. Five minutes later again, they were still there, waiting for the kindly little woman to stop talking so they could thank her and take their leave.

 "You're a real Good Samaritan, Miss Sutton," Sarah gratefully told the other woman as soon as she could get a word in edgeways. "Thank you so much for everything you've done for us, I don't know what we'd have done if you hadn't been kind enough to take us in – I'll never forget it."

 That set her off again and it was another good few minutes before they finally managed to get away.

 "All right, Sarah," said Harry as soon as they were out of earshot. "What is it?"

 "I think we need to go back to the woods," she told him with no further preamble.

 "Why?"

 "Because…" It sounded ridiculous now that she came to say it out loud. "Because that's where the portal opened, before, when we landed here. And if it re-opens in the same place and we aren't there…"

 Harry frowned. "I'm not sure it works like that, Sarah."

 "Well, how does it work, then?"

 He sucked in a breath through his teeth and looked pensive. "I don't know."

 "I know it sounds silly," she admitted. "I know the portals can move around – Tom Craddock was taken from his neighbour's garden, right here in the village. But ours was in the woods and I just…I need to do something. Even if it is crazy. I know we can't just sit there and wait indefinitely, just in case it happens to open up again one day, but if we go back and check, just in case…"

 Harry was quiet for a moment. "All right, then," he said at last. "If that's what you want to do, that's what we'll do."

 She was fairly certain that he was mostly agreeing just to humour her, and because he didn't have any better ideas, but at least they were doing something semi-constructive at last, however pointless it might turn out to be.

 "I have to say, though," Harry added as they walked past the well and out of the village once more, "I don't like our chances of finding the exact spot…"

 

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 Liz checked her figures one last time and made another minute adjustment to one of the more delicate controls on the alien device. It had to be exactly right and fatigue was hanging over her like a fog now, after hours of intense concentration and next to no sleep, running on little more than caffeine and stress. It would be so easy to make a mistake at this stage, ruining everything. She checked the figures again and then looked around.

 Tom Craddock, the time-stranded man from 1834, was looking wide-eyed and anxious as he sat against the far wall, having a soothing cup of tea with Ruth Bellamy, the sergeant acting up as MO in Harry's absence. Over in the exterior doorway, meanwhile, the Brigadier was locked in some urgent discussion or other via the field telephone. Benton was close at hand, however, yawning as he struggled to stay awake, so it was to him that she addressed her next remark. "We're almost ready to begin now, Mr Benton, if you'd like to warn Sergeant Bellamy to get Mr Craddock ready and to be on standby to receive new patients."

 He frowned. "You mean you think they'll be out cold when they come through, like that chap was?"

 "Well, I've refined the calibration to the best of my ability," Liz told him, "Which I hope should minimise the damaging effect of transit through the portal, but unfortunately there's very limited data available to base those calculations on."

 He didn't appear to be much the wiser. "Limited data?"

 "Two previous journeys through the portal: one human and one Tyrsian – Mr Craddock and Brask. Those are the only case studies available to me," she explained. Scientifically speaking, it simply wasn't possible to draw any definitive conclusions from such a small and unrepresentative sample, but she'd been forced to hypothesise as best she could, in the circumstances. "Brask remained comatose a lot longer than Mr Craddock, and while the cumulative impact of two such journeys in rapid succession must be taken into account, Tyrsians also have a much denser molecular structure than humans, which…"

 The blank expression on Benton's face told her she'd lost her audience. This was another aspect of working for UNIT that she hadn't missed after her return to Cambridge: the need to find a way to explain complex scientific principles to military minds.

 "Look, what I'm trying to say is that I've done everything I can to minimise the neurological trauma caused by transit through the portal, based on my limited understanding of how the machine works, but can't eradicate it altogether, not in the time available and not without a lot more test data to study. So –"

 "Mr Benton!" Interrupting her mid-sentence, the Brigadier was charging across the factory floor toward them, waving the handset of the field telephone and looking highly agitated.

 Benton snapped to attention. "Sir?"

 "Word from Control – they've got a read on those creatures –"

 "The Tyrsians?" Liz clarified.

 "Yes, they're on the move – and they're heading this way, fast."

 There was nothing quite like a jolt of adrenaline to get the synapses flowing freely again, no matter how tired you were. "Are they sure?" she demanded, mind racing as she calculated possible implications.

 "As sure as they can be," he confirmed, "Given the technology we're dealing with."

 "Why would they come back here?" wondered Benton.

 "Because we've taken both their ship and the time travel device," Liz pointed out. "They've got nothing left to lose and no way off the planet. So they're trying one last desperate push to reclaim them, at a guess."

 "Or die in the attempt, perhaps," the Brigadier grimly suggested.

 "Can we hold them off?"

 Benton looked anxious. "Not easily. Well, you were here during the battle we had last time, Miss. You saw what it was like. This time we'll be the ones with our backs to the wall, defending the location – and they've got that shroud thing to protect them. Our bullets bounced right off it when they scarpered before."

 Liz looked at the time travel device, thinking fast. They were so close…

 "Maybe," she slowly suggested, "What we need is a shroud of our own."

 "I beg your pardon?" said the Brigadier.

 "That ship out there," she explained, "Also has a shroud device, one that can be extended to surround this whole site. I sabotaged one of the receptors last night to turn it off, but if we can get it up and running again…well, it wouldn't be a long-term solution, but it might buy us a little time."

 The Brigadier nodded. "Do it."

 

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"Ow." Sarah wrenched her hem free of yet another bramble that had been lying in wait to ensnare the unwary. These 1830s dresses really hadn't been designed with cross-country hikes in mind.

 "The thing that's worrying me," Harry was saying, sounding very pensive, "Is that we don't know what's happening back there."

 She played dumb. "You mean in the village?"

 "At UNIT. They were in the middle of a battle when we…left."

 Sarah sighed. "I've been trying not to think about that," she admitted. "There's nothing we can do about it from here."

 "Well, no. But the outcome for us rather depends on the outcome for them," Harry pointed out.

 It was true. Anything could have happened back there, after they got pulled through that portal. The time travel device could have been damaged. UNIT could have lost the battle. All their friends could be dead and the world taken over by aliens. Anything. That was why she'd been trying not to think about it.

 "So what are you saying? That now you don't think they'll manage to get us back? Are you giving up already, Harry?"

 "No, not at all," he countered. "But…I'm saying there could be reasons why they might not. And we should be prepared for that."

 Sarah trudged along silently for a moment, wrestling with herself. "Perhaps," she reluctantly said, "We should decide how long we're going to give it. How long do we wait before we give up, settle down and get on with our lives as Victorians? Or…no, wait, Victoria isn't on the throne yet, is she? That's how early this is." Now she really was depressed.

 Despite having raised the subject, Harry didn't seem to know what to say. Sarah, on the other hand, found she couldn't stop, now that she'd started.

 "Well, you'll be all right," she gloomily hypothesized. "You can stay right here – you've got half the village eating out of your hand already. You just need to send out a few invoices for the work you've already done and bingo, you've got your very own country practice."

 "I think there'd be a bit more to it than that," Harry mildly objected.

 "I just don't know what there'd be for me to do," she disconsolately admitted, kicking at a stone that lay across the path, slightly hampered by her many layers of skirt. "Maybe someone would take me on as a maid."

 Except that she was fairly certain she would make a horrible maid. Subservience did not come naturally to her, and neither did housework.

 "Well, now you're just being silly."

 "No, I'm serious. It's 1834 and that village hasn't even been touched by the industrial revolution yet – jobs for women aren't exactly going to be growing on trees. And don't even think of saying that I won't need to work because you'll look after me," she quickly added.

 Harry lifted an eyebrow. "Wouldn't dream of it, old thing."

 "I've always paid my own way," she stubbornly insisted. Then another thought occurred. "Maybe we should head for the city – there'd be more opportunities there. Or…" she hesitated, uncertain. "I could go on my own, if you'd prefer to stay here…"

 "So you'd abandon me to Miss Sutton and her friends, would you?" There was just a hint of a smile playing at the corners of Harry's lips now. "We've already agreed that we'll stick together, Sarah."

 They had agreed that, yes, but she felt better for hearing him reaffirm it. If she had to be stranded in the past for the rest of her life, at least she wasn't alone.

 "Hey, I won't hear a word against Miss Sutton," she said. "I don't know what we'd have done without her last night."

 "No, nor do I," Harry admitted.

 They walked on for a while in companiable silence, dodging puddles leftover from yesterday's rain.

 "I suppose your Helen will be upset if you don't make it back, though," Sarah remarked after a while – expecting slightly more of a reaction than the exasperated eye roll he shot in her direction.

 "I've been out with the girl twice, Sarah. I imagine she'll get over it."

 She was so surprised that he'd actually responded openly and evenly to teasing about his personal life, instead of getting flustered and tongue-tied as usual, that she didn't know what to say next. "I don't suppose anyone will miss me at all," she said before she could stop herself.

 "Well, now you really are being silly," Harry began in his most reassuring tone.

 "No, I mean it," she told him. "And that isn't self-pity, it's just…I've been coming and going for so long now, most of my friends have barely even realised I'm back, so I can hardly expect them to notice I've gone again, can I?"

 "No one is going to miss either of us, Sarah," Harry firmly replied. "We won't be away long enough to be missed."

 And just like that, his determined optimism of yesterday was back. She only wished she could share it. "Do you think if you say that often enough you can make it come true?" she grumbled, and immediately felt guilty. "Oh, I'm sorry. Here you are trying to be positive and I'm just being a wet blanket. I don't know what's wrong with me. Well, aside from the obvious."

 Harry glanced sideways at her as he walked, then turned his eyes back to the path ahead, ducked a low-hanging branch, and asked, "Is anything the matter, old girl?" just a shade too nonchalantly for the question to be as casual as he no doubt intended it to appear.

 "You mean apart from being stuck almost a hundred and fifty years in the past?"

 "Yes," he said, "I do mean apart from being stuck almost a hundred and fifty years in the past. You've not seemed quite yourself since you got home, you know."

 Well yes, she did know. She'd been feeling fidgety and loose-endish, unable to settle to anything, ever since finding her way back to London after the Doctor dropped her off in Aberdeen. That malaise must be more obvious than she'd realised, though, if Harry of all people felt moved to ask her about it.

 "I don't know what you mean," she evaded…but the thing about facing monsters like Cybermen, Daleks and Sontarans alongside someone was that as a result of the shared adversity you got to know each other extremely well, which made it a lot harder to get away with that kind of defensive fibbing.

 "Yes, you do," said Harry. "Sarah, you've been hanging around UNIT like a bad smell lately –"

 Oh, charming. "I don't come in every day!" she indignantly protested.

 "Well, near enough. And nice though it always is to see you, somehow I don't think it's the pleasure of my company that you're looking for." He paused before adding, rather awkwardly, "I just wondered if there was anything you'd like to get off your chest, that's all, since we seem to have all this time on our hands. And you are my sister, after all…"

 And suddenly, in spite of everything, she was laughing. "You aren't going to forgive me for that, are you, Dr Smith?"

 Harry smiled. "Maybe not for a while."

 They walked on in silence for a moment, and then Sarah gave him a little dig in the ribs. "It is, actually."

 "What's that, old thing?"

 He was never, ever going to stop calling her that – he didn't even know he was doing it, half the time. She was so used to it now that she hardly ever even bothered complaining any more. It was just Harry. "It is you I come to see when I call in at UNIT. Well, mostly."

 "Only mostly, eh?" He was smiling as he said it, teasing, and then gestured at a large tree stump at the side of the road and suggested they take a break from their journey.

 Sarah wasn't tired; in fact, she was fairly certain that nervous energy could keep her moving for miles yet. Harry still had that tight, pinched look around the eyes, though, not quite as well recovered from the stresses and strains of the last few days as she was – he'd been through a lot more than she had, prior to being sucked through the portal, after all – so she agreed. They sat on opposite sides of the stump, since it wasn't wide enough to sit side by side, and she leaned against his back and tried to think of words to describe the unrest she'd been feeling lately.

 "Do you ever miss it, Harry?"

 "Do I miss what?"

 They'd talked a lot, since she'd been home, about the adventures they'd shared, as well as those he'd missed after returning to Earth, but she'd always veered away from this particular subject up till now, nervous of where it might lead. "Being out there, among the stars – the adventure, the excitement, never knowing what's around the next corner."

 "Well," said Harry. "Life on Earth seems exciting enough to me, just at the moment."

 She let out a long breath and then quietly admitted, "I keep thinking he'll come back." She didn't bother explaining who 'he' was; Harry would know. "I haven't been able to settle to anything since I've been home and I think that's why. No, I know that's why. Because for so long we'd barely be back here long enough to blink, never mind anything else, and then we'd be off again, so I got into the habit of…well, of not settling, I suppose. And now I can't seem to break that habit." Just like she couldn't seem to stop talking, now she'd started. "I mean, why bother getting back into old routines, the daily grind, when he could be back any minute and we'll be off again? I suppose that's why I go to UNIT. Because we always did, it was his home when he was on Earth, so if he comes back, when he comes back…that's where he'll go – where the action is."

 Except that he hadn't.

 Sitting behind her, a warm presence at her back, Harry was silent for so long that she wondered if he'd actually fallen asleep in the middle of her emotional confession, but eventually he said, "The Brigadier doesn't think he's coming back this time."

 "Maybe he isn't. I don't know anymore. He said he'd been summoned, he had to go back to Gallifrey and couldn't take me with him, and it's a big universe, after all, lots to see, lots to do, and we both know what he's like, anything might have happened. But we were his friends. He's always come back to us before, in the end…"

 Harry was quiet again for a moment. "Don't take this the wrong way, old girl," he said at last. "But you must have better things to do with your time, surely."

 Sarah snorted. "I don't, actually. Oh, you know what it's like…well, actually, no, you don't, do you? You disappeared off in the TARDIS for months on end and all the Brigadier had to say about it was, 'Oh, you're back are you, Sullivan? Jolly good; back to work, man.'"

 Behind her, Harry huffed a soft chuckle at her impression of the Brigadier, but otherwise stayed quiet, waited for her to finish making her point.

 "The editors I used to sell my stories to, they aren't quite as understanding," she quietly explained. "A lot of my old contacts have moved on and those that haven't don't seem to want to take a chance on me any more, after I dropped off the radar for a couple of years with no warning and no good explanation. I have to start again from scratch, and it just all seems so…so _mundane_ and…oh, it's a moot point now anyway, isn't it? Maybe I could have rebuilt my career, in time, but now we're stuck here, so I just have to get over it and get used to being a Victorian. Come on, let's get moving again."

 Unable to sit still any longer, she bounced to her feet and set off again, without waiting to see if Harry was following.

 She'd been walking for quite a few minutes before he caught up, either because he'd waited for a while before following or because he'd deliberately lagged behind to give her some space.

 "There were female writers in the 19th century, you know," he rather unexpectedly said as he came alongside her. "There was Jane Austen. The Brontë sisters – oh, and what's her name, the one who wrote Frankenstein?"

 "Mary Shelley." Sarah shot a quizzical look at him, unsure what kind of point he was trying to make. "Harry, what do you know about Jane Austen and the Brontës?"

 "I'm not a complete Philistine, Sarah. And the point is, if they can publish their writing in this century, so can you."

 "They were novelists," she pointed out. "I'm a journalist."

 "Well, I'm not saying it would be easy. But I've never known Sarah Jane Smith to back down from a challenge." His eyes were fixed on the path beneath his feet and his cheeks were starting to turn pink, motivational speeches weren't his usual style at all, but he ploughed on. "You've been fighting for what you believe in for as long as I've known you, old thing. Why stop now, just because we're stuck here? You'd have to start again at the beginning, work five times as hard, but your career means a lot to you, so…you should fight for it. I know you'll succeed."

 Sarah didn't know what to say, which was okay because she wasn't sure she could even speak, her throat was so tight. And that was okay, too, since Harry was already so embarrassed at having said something so personal and mushy that he couldn't even look at her. She settled for tucking an arm through his and squeezing it tight, and eventually, when she thought she could trust herself to speak, whispered a very heartfelt "thank you."

 

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 It was beginning to grow dark again, outside the confines of the derelict factory Liz had been sequestered in more or less ever since the raid on UNIT.

 Kneeling alongside the fence, she carefully set the receptor she'd been working on back in place and squinted doubtfully at it, biting her lip. Necessity was the mother of invention, they said. Well, as crash courses in alien technology went, the last couple of days had been quite the whirlwind, she hadn't learned _this much this fast_ since…well, since her last stint at UNIT, working alongside the Doctor. She was on her own this time, though, brain already on overload and adrenaline at war with her fatigue. And she hadn't, when she sabotaged the receptor, anticipated any need to repair it again, never mind at speed. It was lucky that the sabotage had also been carried out at speed and had therefore been perfunctory, rather than thorough.

 "Is it done? Is it working again?" Benton was peering around as if he expected to see some visible sign of the invisible shield he thought might have sprung up around them while she worked. If only it were that simple.

 "Not quite," she told him. "I believe the receptor is functioning again, but won't know for sure until the shroud is switched back on. It's controlled from the Tyrsian ship, so it'll have to be turned on from there."

 And just how that was going to be achieved was a rather daunting prospect that she hadn't quite thought through, when she suggested to the Brigadier that they attempt to use the shroud. She'd never even seen inside the ship, never mind had any idea where to find the shroud controls.

 "Right then." Oblivious to her doubts, Benton straightened up and looked over toward the alien spaceship, still sitting on the forecourt outside the factory building, utterly incongruous with its surroundings. "We'd better get to it, pronto."

 "Yes." Liz wearily pushed back to her feet and followed him across the yard at the briskest jog she could muster, wondering if this interminable day would ever end – and if they could possibly all still be in one piece, when it finally did.

 Before they reached the spaceship, the Brigadier came hurrying across from the perimeter, where he'd been thrashing out strategy and contingency plans with his troops. The field telephone was clamped to his ear still, keeping him in constant communication with the team of radar operators using Martin's scanner to track the Tyrsians, and as he matched stride with Benton he anxiously demanded, "Are we ready yet?"

 "Not quite," Liz repeated.

 He waved the handset. "That alien vehicle is bearing down on us, fast – only minutes away. If we don't get our defences in place before they get here, we've had it."

 As if she didn't already know that. "I'm working as fast as I can, Brigadier," she snapped, pushing past him to stride up the ramp into the alien ship…where she came to an abrupt standstill, all that irritation and anxiety and exhaustion simply melting away at the sight of the interior.

 It was an alien spaceship. Of course it was, she'd known that, but she'd been so caught up in what needed to be done that she hadn't _felt_ it. That first glimpse of the inside, though…there was that thrill again, just like that first glimpse of a new alien in UNIT's sick bay, back at the start of all this.

 It was the glorious contradiction that was UNIT, always had been: that constant conflict between aggravation, danger and exhaustion on the one hand, and the thrill of exploration and discovery of the unknown on the other.

 She allowed herself just a second or two to be awed at the sight, and then got down to business, examining each and every console in search of some clue as to which switch controlled what. It was a very different kind of technology than the time travel device she'd spent the last God-only-knew how many hours studying, product of an entirely different culture, but the layout seemed logical, as had the circuits in the receptor she'd just repaired. So if _this_ controlled the steering and _that_ was the engine…

 "They're two minutes away, Miss Shaw," the Brigadier called from the doorway, his voice sharp and urgent.

  _This_ was some kind of communications array and over _there_ …were the same symbols she'd seen marked on the receptor casing, quite distinct from the symbols marking any other control panels in the room. So was that it? There were several switches on the panel, all different colours…

 "Sixty seconds, Miss Shaw!"

 She'd seen and used a few Tyrsian tools while working with Rahl and Martin on the time travel device. The controls had been similarly coloured, the different colours denoting the various functions of the switches. So if the sequence of the colour coding here was the same…

 There wasn't time for doubts or for second guessing.

 Liz picked a switch and flipped it.


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> As Liz saves the day, there is time for reflection: what does the future hold now?

Liz threw the switch and then took a step back, breathing hard.

 "Is that it?" Benton's voice came from somewhere behind her. "Did it work?"

 She'd barely even opened her mouth to reply when an almighty roar filled the air and the spaceship she was standing in rocked beneath her feet, sending her crashing to the floor, while the control panel she'd just been working at exploded in a shower of sparks. She worked her fingers into the mesh flooring and hung on for several long, confusing seconds until the deck stopped shaking and sparks stopped flying. When the worst appeared to be over, she risked opening her eyes again to see Benton crawling across the floor toward her.

 "Are you all right, Miss?"

 "Yes, I think so." A little dazed and somewhat confused, but intact. "And you? What happened?"

 "Some kind of explosion, out there." Benton seemed almost as shell-shocked as she was – he'd also been on the go for far too long now with no sleep, of course.

 Had the Tyrsians had some kind of bomb aboard their land vehicle? Did that mean the shroud hadn't enabled, at least not in time? The spaceship had been rocked by the explosion but not damaged, not a direct hit, so…

 With these questions and many more whizzing around inside her head, Liz hurried over to the door with Benton to find out what had happened.

 Outside was a scene of chaos. The Brigadier was just picking himself up off the ground, having been thrown off the spaceship's entry ramp by the blast, while the troops spread around the site were doing likewise. Most appeared relatively undamaged but a few looked to be injured, those who'd been closest to the blast, which had evidently taken place at the perimeter. Flaming debris was scattered far and wide and it took a good few moments of silent staring before Liz began to understand what she was seeing.

 "It's that vehicle," Benton murmured. "The alien vehicle – it's exploded."

 They approached the wreckage with extreme caution, Benton and the Brigadier with weapons at the ready, but there was no sign of life.

 Up close, the stink of burnt flesh was almost unbearable. The Tyrsians were dead, all of them. The Brigadier and Benton seemed pleased – an enemy subdued with minimal trouble on their part, and at least one aspect of the case they could now lay to rest – but Liz couldn't bring herself to rejoice in the loss of life. The aliens had been thieves, careless and irresponsible and aggressive, but surely death and destruction could never be considered the best possible outcome.

 "So what happened, what caused it – did they give in and blow themselves up, hoping to take us with them?" the Brigadier wondered, poking at a bit of the wreckage with his swagger stick.

 "You'd think they'd have done a better job of it," Benton remarked.

 I don't think that's what happened," Liz slowly said, examining the wreckage and its position carefully. Bits of debris were scattered all around, but the centre of the explosion appeared to have been just inside the perimeter fence – just about where the forcefield would have been, if the shroud had enabled in time to repel the rapidly approaching aliens.

 "What do you mean?"

 "I can't tell you anything definitive," she warned, toeing aside a chunk of wreckage to reveal one of the receptors lying beneath, blackened and charred as if it had shorted out from within rather than been damaged by the explosion nearby. "You'll need an in-depth forensic investigation for that. But if I had to guess…I'd say they hit the shroud."

 "Hit the shroud?"

 She was almost certain. "At some speed, presumably," she hypothesized. "We'll never know what their intentions were – maybe you're right, maybe it was a suicide run, intended to take us all down with them, and that device of theirs as well. They'd need to have hit the building for that, though, and they never made it. I think they hit the shroud, I think we got it back up just in time for them to fly straight into it. Theirs was also enabled and the impact of the two forcefields, shorting each other out and feeding that energy back into the vessel…well, we can see the results for ourselves. And the feedback would be why the console in the ship also exploded."

 "Hmmm." The Brigadier looked thoughtful. "Perhaps you're right – I'll order a full investigation. In the meantime –"

 "The device!" She'd almost forgotten about it, in all the drama and confusion. "Let's hope it wasn't affected by the blast," she called over her shoulder as she started to run toward the building.

 

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"Okay, this isn't familiar at all," Sarah glumly admitted, peering around more in hope than expectation of seeing something she recognised from their first journey through the woods. "Maybe we've already passed the point where we found the path."

 Harry scrubbed a hand through his curls and wrinkled his nose as he likewise surveyed their surroundings. "Maybe. Got to admit, it's all so many trees to me."

 It was all just so many trees to her, as well. That was the trouble. Harry had said from the start that he didn't think they'd be able to retrace their steps to the spot where the portal had dropped them, and it was starting to look as if he'd been right about that, but she wasn't prepared to give up just yet. "And don't say 'I told you so', either."

 "I wasn't going to!"

 "We knew it would be a long shot, but that's no reason not to try," she insisted. She wasn't even sure any more why she felt so strongly about this, only that she did – trying to distract herself from the reality of their situation, perhaps. "Come on, let's head back the other way and pay more attention, this time. There was a bit of a bank that we had to scramble down when we joined the path, remember, so we should look out for that."

 She swung about on her heel and determinedly marched back along the path, keeping a sharp eye out for anything even remotely resembling the bank that she so vaguely remembered. Behind her, she heard Harry sigh as he trailed in her wake.

 Any minute now he was going to say that they should give it up as a bad job and head back to the village to start making proper plans, she just knew it. "Just a little bit longer, Harry, all right?" she pre-empted him. "Look, there's a bit of a bank there – is that the one we came down before?"

 They stood and scrutinised the spot, but neither one could say for sure whether it was or wasn't the point at which they had joined the path yesterday.

 "Well, let's have a look anyway." Gathering up her unwieldy and excessive volume of skirt, she quickly scrambled up the bank and set off among the trees.

 "Don't go too far, Sarah," Harry quickly called after her as he followed. "Don't want to get lost, now, do we?"

 "We found the path before, we can find it again," she stubbornly called back, and then noticed something. "Hang on. I think there's another path over here." It was faint, nowhere near as well trodden or clearly defined as the road they'd been following, but it looked like a path to her.

 Harry came alongside her. "That's an animal track."

 "Are you sure?" She squinted at it again and pulled a face. "So does the Navy teach its medical officers how to track, or were you in the Scouts as a boy? Or are you just making it up?" Before he could answer, she'd already moved on. "There wasn't a track like that where we came out before, anyway, so it must be further back that way…"

 "Sarah." His tone was gentle.

 She stopped moving, kept her back to him. "Yes, I know." But she didn't want to admit it. "We're wasting our time, aren't we?

 "I don't think we're going to find the spot where we landed, no," he quietly said. "And I can't see how it'll help us if we do."

 She knew that. She did. But admitting it felt like a much larger admission of defeat. "I just wanted to…" she began, before trailing off with a sigh. Crunch time, she supposed. "I feel as if we're giving up. If we go back to the village and start making real plans for a future here, it's as if we're giving up and admitting we're never going to go home."

 All those bold suggestions she'd already made, so sure that Harry would be able to establish a medical practice with ease, her agreement that she'd try to get a few articles published and see if the 1830s press were willing to play ball with a female journalist…it had all been so much pie in the sky, she now felt. She'd been playing at accepting their fate, rather than actually accepting it. But if they turned around now, that would make it real.

 "Interim plans," said Harry in that overly reassuring tone he used when he was worried and didn't want it to show, because he still believed in old-fashioned chivalry and a stiff upper lip, that it was his job as the man to be stoic for her sake. "Just to tide us over."

 Letting out a long, shuddering breath as she gave in, Sarah nodded. "All right," she agreed, with a very heavy heart. "Let's go."

 

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 The Brigadier and Benton reached the entrance to the old factory slightly ahead of Liz and were met at the door by Tom Craddock, who was in a state of high agitation, and Sergeant Bellamy, who was torn between her assigned duty to look after the time-stranded man and her desire to help tend to the soldiers who'd been injured by the explosion. Liz caught up just as the Brigadier was rapping out brisk instructions for Bellamy to see to the wounded and Benton to see to Craddock. "Over to you, Miss Shaw," he added, standing aside to let her through.

 She sprinted faster than she'd felt capable of only half an hour earlier, across the room to the device, and anxiously began checking the various control panels and comparing the settings to her notes and calculations.

 "Well?" demanded the Brigadier, at her shoulder.

 "I'm checking," she impatiently told him. "Just wait a moment."

 He fell silent, but she remained very aware of his presence, lurking fretfully just behind her as she checked and rechecked every setting on every panel, both the ones she'd so carefully calculated because she knew they were crucial and the ones she hadn't touched because she'd not been shown what they were for and could only hope were not critical for a retrieval.

 "I think it's all right," she said at last, turning to the UNIT commander. "Nothing appears to be damaged. It's all set up still, ready to go when we are."

 The Brigadier was regarding the machine with an inscrutable expression. "Jolly good," he said, rather more pensively than she was expecting. Something was bothering him, now that the Tyrsians had been dealt with and they were on the verge of attempting a retrieval – all of which meant, of course, that they were also that much closer to a final settlement of some kind with the _other_ group of aliens.

 "So, if this works," she carefully began. "If we get our people back safely…what do you intend to do with the machine? Will you hand it back to the Atarons?"

 He stiffened and shot a thoughtful look at her. So she was right, that was what was bothering him. "Well, it is their property," he said. "Or so they claim – a prototype, apparently: one of a kind."

 "No wonder they're so anxious to retrieve it." And also no wonder, then, that it wasn't something just any of their engineers or technicians should have been able to help with.

 "Yes." He was wearing that inscrutable expression again as he added, "One has to wonder, though, just what they intend to do with the infernal thing."

 "The thought had crossed my mind, yes."

 He started pacing. "If there's one thing my acquaintance with the Doctor taught me, it's that this kind of technology is dangerous. In the wrong hands, it could cause untold damage – possibly even tear the fabric of the universe apart!"

 It sounded rather melodramatic, stated like that, but he was probably right – and he'd known the Doctor a lot longer than she had, long enough that he could no doubt make that statement with a fair degree of authority.

 "Yes," said Liz, wondering if her own attempt at operating the device could be considered as falling under the banner of 'in the wrong hands'. Rather than worry about that, she played devil's advocate by adding, "But it does belong to them."

 "Yes, it does belong to them." He pursed his lips and then said, "What they do with the technology they've developed is, of course, none of our business, so long as it does not directly affect this planet. But if we've given it to them, then it is our responsibility."

 He had a point, but Liz continued to play devil's advocate. "But if we don't give it back to them, what will they do then?"

 "Yes," said the Brigadier. "Exactly."

 "How long have we got left before the deadline?"

 He checked his watch. "Just over an hour."

 "We'd better get on with it, then." The more philosophical questions of ethics and responsibility would have to wait. "Can you ask Mr Benton to bring Mr Craddock over?"

 They got ready. Liz took time for a quick word with Craddock, who was awestruck by everything that had happened to him since being sucked through the portal and very nervous about what was going on around him now. She calmed his nerves as best she could, told him what she expected to happen and where to stand, warned everyone else to stay well back…and suddenly there was nothing left to do other than operate the device and hope she'd got her calculations right.

 "It'll take a few minutes for the search algorithm to run before the portal actually opens," she explained, trying to project an air of confidence that she wasn't actually feeling. "I've fine-tuned it as much as I can, so hopefully not too much time will have elapsed for Harry and Sarah by the point at which it locks on and synchronises, but we'll just have to wait and see."

 "Understood," said the Brigadier.

 "All right, then. Here goes."

 She pressed the button to operate the device.

 

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 "I still think you'll need to send out invoices for all that doctoring you did earlier," said Sarah, kicking at her muddy hem as she trudged along the path back toward the village.

 Harry gave her a Look. Which, all right, had been partly the point, but she was only half joking.

 "Look," she said. "We don't have a penny to our name and we're going to have to start paying for our bed and board, wherever we end up staying. And you've already provided a chargeable service, so let's just bite the bullet, be practical and charge for it."

 He didn't seem convinced. "I was doing a favour earlier. If I was going to charge, that should have been agreed up front, not asked for retrospectively."

 He had a point…but so did she. They simply had to be practical if they wanted to build some kind of life here. Besides, the more she focused on practicalities, the less she had to think about grim realities.

 "Well, you're going to have to _start_ charging, then, because we need to start earning and it'll be quicker for you to pick up a few patients than it will be for me to find an editor willing to take me on, or any other kind of employment – especially out here in the sticks," she determinedly told him, and then added, "Hey, what about that constable?"

 "What about the constable?"

 "He's laid up with gout, remember. Miss Sutton thought he could do with a house call. Maybe he could be your first paying customer…"

 She trailed off mid-sentence, suddenly aware that something was happening, a strange sucking sensation coming from behind that filled her head with white noise and her eardrums with pressure.

 She caught at Harry's hand as she turned around, just in time to be enveloped by a brilliant flash of purpley-blue light…followed by darkness.

 

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 It worked.

 Liz held her breath in nervous anticipation as the portal opened at the exact point she'd calculated and Tom Craddock, standing uneasily on the spot she'd shown him, was sucked into it in seconds. He'd have a rough landing at the other end and there wouldn't necessarily be anyone around to care for him, which was a slight concern, and he'd no doubt have a hard time explaining what had happened to him, but at least he'd be back where he belonged and she was confident he'd be fine, medically speaking.

 Seconds later, Harry and Sarah tumbled out of the portal, hand in hand, not wearing the clothes they'd had on when they disappeared, and landed in a tangled heap of limbs and skirt on the floor. Liz hit the control to kill the portal at once, before anyone else could get caught up in it, and hurried over to them.

 Benton got there first and was already giving them a quick once over by the time she got there. They were both unconscious.

 "The calibration still wasn't quite right, then," Liz ruefully noted as she bent to check vitals, not that she'd expected any different. Both breathing, steady pulse; she was satisfied that they'd be fine. It would be interesting to see how long they remained comatose, to learn if her refinement of the machine had helped at all – and their outfits seemed to confirm her calculation of the 1830s as their landing point, which also confirmed that she had sent Tom Craddock back to the right time and not somewhere else entirely.

 A huge weight seemed to have been lifted from her shoulders. It had worked. All those hours of study, such a seemingly impossible task, and it had worked. She could breathe again now. Better still, she could _sleep_ now. Whatever else still remained to be done, her part in this was over.

 "Congratulations, Miss Shaw." The Brigadier subjected her to the most vigorous handshake she'd ever experienced. "Don't know what we'd have done without you."

 Things moved quite quickly after that. A clean-up team descended, the wounded were loaded up and taken away for treatment, and Harry and Sarah were carefully moved into one of the vehicles for transfer back to UNIT's sick bay. Liz went with them and tried not to fall asleep the moment she was sitting down, two days' worth of fear and stress and lack of sleep hitting her hard now that the crisis was over.

 The adrenaline had worn off, she drowsily reflected, and that always left a fairly hefty bill to pay…

 Another explosion rocked the air, jolting her out of her almost-slumber.

 "What's that? What happened?" she called out in alarm.

 "Nothing to worry about, Miss," the driver called back. "The Brigadier has everything under control."

 They were less than half a mile down the road from the old factory…the old factory where the time travel device was currently located…the time travel device that the Brigadier had been so concerned about handing back to the Atarons, not knowing quite what they intended to do with it or whether they could be trusted to use it responsibly.

 'In the wrong hands, it could cause untold damage – possibly even tear the fabric of the universe apart,' he'd said, before acknowledging that it belonged to the Atarons and they would be sure to react badly if it was not returned to them.

 He'd always been trigger-happy, but would he really have blown it up rather than hand it back? Was he that concerned about having such technology out there in the universe? How did he expect to get away with it?

 Chewing over these questions kept Liz awake for the remainder of the journey back to UNIT, where she busied herself getting her patients settled into sick bay. By the time she'd finished, Benton had turned up to check on his friends. She rounded on him at once.

 "What happened, Mr Benton?"

 He looked innocent. "What do you mean, Miss?"

 Oh, she'd had enough of that. "Either Professor Shaw or Liz, if you don't mind, Mr Benton, and you know exactly what I mean. What happened at the factory after I left? He blew it up, didn't he? He blew up the device rather than hand it back to the Atarons."

 Benton regarded her impassively for a long moment. Eventually he said, absolutely straight-faced, "We managed to locate the Tyrsians, but they escaped, I'm afraid, and then launched a suicide attack while we were exploring the location, since they had that invisible vehicle, and all. They'd set incendiary charges around the stolen device to prevent anyone taking it from them. We managed to evacuate our personnel, although a number were injured, but were unable to save the device, which was destroyed along with the Tyrsian land vehicle and everyone aboard."

 That…almost sounded plausible. But that might just be exhaustion robbing her of the ability to think straight. "Won't the Atarons be furious? They'll believe we've stolen it for ourselves," she pointed out.

 Benton shrugged. "They've been invited to collect what's left, so they'll know we've not kept it. Best all round, really."

 She was too tired to care any more. If there was going to be a war of attrition, she'd worry about it in the morning. "Yes," she said. "Yes, I suppose it is."

 

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 In the end, after everything that had happened, Liz found that she couldn't actually get to sleep. She didn't think she'd ever been so exhausted, yet when she made her way back to the billet she'd used on that first night, now populated by the baggage she'd had sent down from Cambridge, the moment she lay down on the bed she felt wide awake once more, head buzzing with everything she'd seen and done and learned.

 She tossed and turned for some time, then dozed fitfully for a while before finally nodding off, only to find her sleep disturbed by vivid dreams about aliens and spaceships and explosions. Someone wanted her to learn something, it was important, critical, and nobody else could do it, but her brain was simply too full to absorb any new information, she couldn't possibly cram anything more into it, yet she had to try, she couldn't afford to fail…

 She woke up again in the darkness of the wee small hours, not the slightest bit rested yet feeling further from real sleep than ever. She was going to have to get up and spend some time winding down before she'd be able to get any proper rest.

 The corridors and hallways of UNIT were in semi-darkness, almost eerie, with only the dimmest of lighting used during the night time hours. There were signs of life here and there, though, a reminder that the emergency was not quite over yet, and the front desk was still being manned by a young private, who called after her as she passed. "There's a telephone message here for you, Professor Shaw. Came in last night, we should have given it to you earlier."

 Professor. So Benton had actually listened to her earlier and spread the word around, had he?

 The message was from Roger, asking her to call back when she had a chance. Hearing it was rather like being slapped in the face. Roger. She'd actually forgotten all about him, caught up as she'd been in the all-absorbing crisis.

 It was the middle of the night. He wouldn't thank her for calling at this hour; it would have to wait till morning. She pushed on to the shabby little kitchenette attached to the common room, where she found the Brigadier making a pot of tea, looking even wearier than she felt. He'd seemed fresh as a daisy throughout the crisis, but the long hours and lack of sleep had clearly caught up with him at last.

 He glanced up and saw her in the doorway, offered a tired smile. "Cup of tea, Miss Shaw?"

 Benton's memo hadn't made it that far yet, then.

 "Thank you." She sat at the table and watched him potter around with mugs and milk, as close to off-duty as she'd ever seen him.

 "I was told you were sleeping," he said, sitting opposite and pushing a mug across the table to her.

 "Oh, I tried, but my brain isn't quite ready to switch off just yet," she admitted. "I think I may have overloaded it a little."

 "Yes," he said, radiating sincerity. "Yes, thank you again. I know you were reluctant to return to UNIT, and we don't always see eye to eye, so I want you to know that I do appreciate all your efforts over the last few days. There would have been a very different outcome, if not for your input."

 "Well, it's not quite over yet, is it?" she pointed out, remembering the concerns she'd taken to bed with her. "What did the Atarons say, when you told them your little bedtime story about how their device was destroyed?"

 He had the grace to look somewhat chagrined. "Ah. Yes. A gamble, I know, but they've not questioned it yet."

 "How did they take the news?"

 "Well, they're unhappy, of course, but they seem satisfied that at least the perpetrators won't escape with the technology," he shrugged. "That Commander Tace of theirs is a reasonable sort of chap, for an alien. They do want to see the wreckage, though, to verify the destruction of the device and claim whatever remains as evidence for their superiors." He glanced at his watch. "I'll have to head back out shortly, to supervise their arrival – quite an undertaking, allowing an alien forensic team onto human soil, you understand."

 "Of course." It certainly would be – and wasn't something he could delegate, she supposed, no matter how tired he was, just as her work on the device yesterday hadn't been something anyone else could carry on while she rested. "There'll be blueprints and design specifications for the device, you know, back on their homeworld," she quietly observed. "Destroying the prototype won't stop them building another."

 "No," he agreed. "But it might slow them down – make them think twice about whatever they intended using the infernal thing for. Time travel doesn't solve anyone's problems, you know. It only creates new ones."

 This was a side of him that she hadn't really seen before. In her previous stint at UNIT all those years ago, it would have been the Doctor who concerned himself with such details, while the Brigadier got on with the practical business of shooting and blowing things up and called it national security. Maybe this was the Doctor's influence she was seeing, finally rubbed off after all those years of working together – or maybe it was the effect of the Doctor's departure, forcing UNIT's commander to think about the bigger picture for himself instead of relying on the Doctor to do it for him. He'd made a judgement call when he destroyed that machine. He'd looked beyond the immediate threat to the wider implications and made a judgement call accordingly, and whether that was the right choice or a mistake, it wasn't something she'd have expected of him when she marched through his office door only three days ago.

 She smiled. "The Doctor taught you that, did he?"

 He lifted an eyebrow. "In a manner of speaking, Miss Shaw. In a manner of speaking."

 She took a sip of her tea, aware that he was regarding her somewhat speculatively.

 "Perhaps I might ask, Miss Shaw," he began, "What your plans are now?"

 She hadn't really had much of a chance to think about it, but saw no reason why her plans should be any different now than they had been when she first arrived here, three days ago. "Well, there are still loose ends to be tied up on this investigation, of course, but when that's finished I'll go back to Cambridge – I have a research project at rather a critical stage, you understand, and I've abandoned it for far too long already. Unless, of course," she added with a sigh, "Your intention was to requisition me on a more permanent basis than this one investigation. You do understand, don't you, that a scientific advisor for UNIT could be hired through normal channels? The issue of requisition orders to remove someone from their existing position is rather an unnecessarily extreme measure."

 "Miss Shaw, it would indeed be of great benefit for UNIT to have a scientific advisor permanently on hand and you are both uniquely qualified and uniquely experienced for the post," he replied, looking rueful. "I am aware, however, of your reluctance to leave your work at Cambridge to take up a position here…so I wondered if it might be possible to reach some kind of compromise."

 She hardly dared ask, for fear of where it might lead – just look where showing the faintest of interests in this investigation had led her. "What kind of compromise?"

 "The main portion of this case may be over now, but there'll be a lot of debris left behind – alien debris, you understand: technical, mechanical…physical." The remains of the Tyrsians, she realised, that was what he was talking about: their charred corpses, whatever was left of the land vehicle, their spaceship, Brask's armour – anything that wasn't claimed by the Atarons as evidence. "That debris will need to be analysed, decisions made whether further study would be beneficial to mankind or if disposal would be the safest option. And there will be other cases, I've no doubt. As I told you when we first met, ten tons of alien material drift through space and land on this planet every day, only a fraction of which is released for study by the wider scientific community. UNIT will always come into contact with extra-terrestrial matter and will always be in need of scientific advice." He hesitated slightly before adding, "It doesn't necessarily have to be a full time position, however."

 So that was where this was leading.

 "We would like to keep you, Miss Shaw," he stated outright. "In any capacity, but only if you are willing. So if you aren't prepared to leave your position at Cambridge for a full-time post, would you at least consider making yourself available for consultation purposes? I'm sure some arrangement could be struck with the college and you would have access to discoveries beyond the realms of imagination for most scientists in your position."

 She regarded him impassively, determined not to let him get one over her again – three o'clock in the morning after the best part of two days and two nights with no sleep was the worst possible time to be having this conversation and he knew it. "I'd never be allowed to publish any of that research."

 There was a twinkle in his eye as he replied, "Whatever happened to scientific enquiry for its own sake? You could make a real difference here, Miss Shaw – as, indeed, you saw last night. Will you at least consider it?"

 Liz finished her tea and then pushed her chair back from the table, ready to stand. "You should get some rest, Brigadier, before you go to meet the Atarons."

 "I could say much the same thing to you," he retorted. "And my suggestion?"

 His suggestion was tempting. That was the awful thing about it. She hadn't thought about UNIT in years, she'd simply put her time there behind her and got on with her life, and returning now had reminded her of all the reasons she'd been only too glad to get away…but it had also reminded her of some of the reasons she'd stayed as long as she had. It was hard to forget the thrill she'd felt upon seeing a new alien and alien spaceship for the first time in years and the sense of achievement that came of mastering alien technology and using it to save lives, something that Cambridge could never give her, satisfying though her work there was. He was right, she could make a real difference here, in a far more immediate sense than any of the research projects she'd conducted elsewhere…if she could only bring herself to tolerate the aggravation that came of dealing with close-minded military types on a regular basis, to say nothing of the danger she would no doubt be exposed to. The question was: did she want to?

 She smiled. "I'll think about it."

 

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 Groaning, Sarah peeled her eyes open to find Liz Shaw bending over her, smiling. "Welcome back," said the scientist.

 "Back?" Oh, she remembered now – 1834 and all that. This wasn't 1834, though. There were fluorescent strip lights overhead, test tubes and microscopes on a workbench nearby and Liz Shaw standing alongside her, looking heavy-eyed and rumpled. This was UNIT. Impossibly, this was UNIT. She'd all but given up hope – had been resigning herself to becoming a Victorian. And now she was home. "We made it," she murmured in disbelief. "We're back."

 The relief was enormous; her voice, however, was not. Clearing her throat, she moistened her lips and looked around to see if there was any water anywhere in the offing.

 Liz obligingly produced a glass and helped her sip it. "That's right, you made it. You're back. How do you feel?"

 "Oh, don't ask." Her head was swimming and she hadn't even tried to sit up yet. She remembered Harry complaining after their first portal trip about having been knocked out three times in a day and was beginning to understand how he'd felt…

 Harry.

 "Where's Harry?" Sudden concern brought her to a semi-upright position rather faster than either her head or stomach were entirely comfortable with, and she couldn't quite bite back another groan, leaned back on her elbows to take the getting up process a little slower.

 "He's here." Liz moved aside to give her a view of him, slumbering on a cot nearby. "He's fine, just taking a little longer to wake up than you."

 "I don't think he was feeling all that well," Sarah remembered. That pinched look around his eyes was still there now, even unconscious. "Not since we landed, really."

 "I'm not surprised." Liz stepped over to the workbench and began to move things around. "I had a taste of the Tyrsians' stun weapon and I've only just shaken off the hangover. Harry had two doses followed by two trips through the portal – he'll be feeling the after-effects for a while yet, I imagine. There shouldn't be any long-term effects, though, for either of you. Here, take this for the headache."

 She offered a couple of small tablets and Sarah was only too glad to take them. The headache was far worse this time than last – Harry was going to feel really rotten when he woke up, if he was still feeling the effect of the stun gun as well.

 "It was you who did it, wasn't it – reversed the machine to bring us back? Harry kept saying he was sure you would, but I didn't really believe it," she confessed, finally achieving a properly upright sitting position and swinging her legs over the side of the examination table she was lying on…with some difficulty, since she was still wearing that wretched 1830s frock with its layers and layers of oversized skirt.

 "I'm not sure I entirely believed it myself," Liz admitted. "Not until the moment it actually worked."

 "I can't tell you how grateful I am." Which was silly, really, because she was a journalist by trade and supposedly good with words, but there simply were no words for how thankful she was about this. "I feel as if I've been given my whole life back. I know UNIT don't have anyone else who could have done it."

 A groan from the other bed interrupted whatever Liz might have said in reply. Harry was waking up.

 "About time, too," Sarah teased as he opened his eyes. "I've been up for ages."

 While Harry went through the same loop she'd just run – water, pills, relief at being home, and so on – Sarah thought to ask what had been happening here, while they'd been stranded in the past. "There was a battle going on when we…well, you know."

 "Well," said Liz, "In a nutshell, the Tyrsians blew themselves up, the time travel device was destroyed – thankfully not before we'd managed to pull you back – and the Brigadier is out negotiating with the Atarons over the remains as we speak."

 "Sorry, negotiating with whom?" Harry never had been very good at keeping alien names straight, even when he wasn't feeling the effect of a few too many stun gun hits and portal trips and looking decidedly green around the gills.

 "The other group of aliens, remember?" Sarah reminded him, attempting to stand for the first time since she'd awoken, only to almost trip headlong over her floor-length hem. She just barely caught herself in time. "Oh, this wretched skirt!"

 Liz looked amused. "Yes, you both look as if you were well and truly settled in – how long was it for you, out of interest?"

 "About two days," Sarah told her.

 "Not too long, then – I couldn't be sure." Liz seemed pleased. "I tried to narrow it down as closely as I could. Where did you get the clothes?"

 "We borrowed them…" Sarah realised something. "Well, actually, I suppose, we've stolen them – we can't give them back now, can we? Can't get our own clothes back, either – drat, I really liked that skirt! I'm going to look a right idiot going home dressed like this."

 Liz chuckled. "I've got some clothes here that you can borrow. They may not be quite your style, but I think they'll fit well enough to get you home."

 "Oh, anything would be better than going home in this," Sarah gratefully assured her.

 "And I'd quite like to hear the whole story at some point," Liz added. "For now, though, now that you're both up and about, I think it's time for me to get some sleep. I'll have the clothes sent over for you, Sarah. Good night."

 Sarah glanced out of the window at the rosy glow on the horizon, signalling daybreak, and grinned. "Good morning. And thank you again, for everything!"

 With a smile and a "you're quite welcome" Liz left the room, passing Sergeant Bellamy in the doorway. Sarah sat down again and kept quiet as Bellamy bustled around, seeming to get quite a kick out of acting up as medical officer to care for the actual medical officer while he was indisposed, which Harry dealt with by lying back, closing his eyes and pretending to be asleep again.

 Since her head was pounding still, she followed his example and relished the opportunity to just be still and reflect for a while, after the frantic activity and anxiety of the last few days. The peace didn't last long, however, as Benton and the Brigadier turned up mid-morning, all smiles and slaps on the back because the aliens were gone, the case was closed and everyone was safe. There was no doubt that their pleasure and relief at her safe return was genuine and she was deeply touched by it, all the more since the whole experience had brought home to her more clearly than ever that she did not belong at UNIT, not now that the Doctor was gone, however close she felt to some of the friends she'd made here.

 When everyone had gone again, Sarah changed into the clothes Liz had sent over for her: a smart, business-like blouse, skirt and jacket suit, the sort of thing she used to wear for work and had got out of the habit of while travelling the universe with the Doctor. Almost symbolic, she supposed, of the decision she'd just made. Once dressed, she went and found Harry, who'd changed into some civvies he'd had stashed away somewhere in sick bay, and sat alongside him.

 "I thought you might like to know that you were right."

 He looked vaguely surprised. "I was? Right about what?"

 She took a deep breath. "About me. You were right: I have been hanging around UNIT too much lately."

 "Oh, I wouldn't say that," Harry immediately demurred, and Sarah snorted.

 "Yes, you would," she retorted. "You did! You told me I'd been hanging around like a bad smell and you were right."

 She hesitated slightly, unsure quite how she wanted to phrase what she needed to say, but…oh well, in for a penny, in for a pound.

 "I didn't want to admit that it was over," she quietly continued. "My time with the Doctor, I mean. I knew I'd neglected my career and I knew it would be hard to put it back together again, and the thought of having to work so hard just to write stories about…oh, I don't even know, about house prices and economics. It all seems so _small_ , after the things I've seen and done, out there among the stars. So I kept putting it off and putting it off and I came and hung around here instead, hoping the Doctor would come back for me. But he isn't coming back, I know that now. And it took being stranded in 1834 to make me see how much I was taking for granted about the life and the freedom I have here. You were right. I worked hard to get where I was in my career, and if I was prepared to put in that effort to try to reclaim even a tiny part of it in 1834, surely I owe it to myself to do the same thing now."

 Harry smiled. "Now that sounds more like the Sarah Jane I know."

 "So," she continued, "I've decided that I won't be coming in to UNIT any more. Not in the way I have been, anyway. I mean, there's nothing for me to do here, so I just get in the way, all this place does is remind me of the Doctor, and besides, if I'm serious about getting back to work, I'm not going to have time, am I?"

 "I see. So does that mean I'll be able to get on with my work in peace from now on?" Harry asked, deadpan, but with a mischievous twinkle in his eye.

 "That's right, Dr _Smith_ – until the next alien invasion, anyway." She gave him an affectionate little shoulder nudge. "We're going to have to catch up on each other's news outside of work, from now on, like normal people." It was strange, how relieved she felt upon making this decision – as if a burden had been lifted that she hadn't even realised she was carrying. She'd been holding herself back, waiting for the Doctor to come back for her, and now that she'd let go of that hope, as much as she still missed him…she felt free. "I've been waiting around for far too long now. It's time I got on with my life."

 


	8. Epilogue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Life goes on...

 

Calling in at UNIT for the first time in a couple of weeks, Sarah half wondered if she'd be turned away at the gate, since her pass had expired and she was no longer quite the familiar face she'd once been. Private Henderson was on duty, however, and he simply waved her through with a broad smile that she couldn't help but return. Making a break from this place had been the right decision, but it did feel nice to be made welcome still.

 Inside, she found Benton at the front desk and stopped for a quick chat about his kid sister's latest antics before heading for sick bay, where Harry was pottering around making a mess. Sarah grinned. "Whatever are you doing, Harry?"

 He jumped at the sound of her voice and dropped a box of medical dressings all over the floor, shook his head at the mess, with a look of resignation, and then finally turned his attention to her. "Hallo, old girl – haven't seen you for a while."

 "Well, I did tell you I wouldn't be dropping in quite so much," she reminded him, bending to help pick up the scattered bandages. "Are you busy?"

 He waved a hand at the medical supplies he had strewn all over the work bench. "Stocktaking."

 Sarah laughed. "Oh, is that what this is? Business must be bad if you've been reduced to that."

 He grinned. "Well, things are rather quiet at the moment, I will admit."

 "Harry, have you seen – oh, Sarah. I wasn't expecting to find you here." Liz Shaw rather unexpectedly appeared in the doorway, and seemed as surprised to see Sarah as Sarah was to see her.

 "Likewise – I thought you'd have gone back to Cambridge by now."

 "Ah, yes." Liz chuckled, rather ruefully. "Well, I have, but I'm also continuing a spot of research here at UNIT, just the odd day here and there – it's a new arrangement that the Brigadier and I are trying out. Early days yet, so we'll have to see how we get along."

 "Well, I'm glad you're here, actually," Sarah told her. "I was going to ask the Brigadier to send this on to you. It's why I'm here. I've been in to the record office and had a look at the 1841 census – it was the first there ever was, you know. They let me make a copy of this page." She pulled it out of her bag and unfolded it to show them. "This is part of the entry for Lower Tarrow, and look – there's Tom Craddock. Still living in Lower Tarrow seven years after you sent him home, Liz, still a carpenter, married with a little boy."

 "That's marvellous." Liz took the paper to examine the entry in more detail.

 "Not that there was ever any doubt that you'd sent him back to the right place," Sarah quickly added. "I just thought it was nice to have proof that he made it home safely, that he got on with his life."

 "It is," Liz nodded. "I'm grateful, thank you. May I keep this?"

 "Of course."

 Tucking the paper into a pocket, Liz looked apologetic. "Look, I'd love to stay and catch up, but I'm afraid I really need to get on – I'm due back in Cambridge this afternoon to meet with some students."

 "You wanted something?" Harry reminded her.

 "I did – that." She pointed at a fancy-looking microscope affair on a bench. "May I?"

 "Of course, feel free."

 As Liz said goodbye, took the microscope and left, Sarah turned back to Harry. "I can't stay either, I'm afraid. I've got a meeting with the head of a medical research laboratory and I don't want to be late – there could be a story in it."

 Predictably, Harry's ears pricked up at the mention of medical research, which was just the reaction she'd been hoping for. "Sounds intriguing."

 "Possibly, I'm not completely sure yet," she admitted. It was the first potential story she'd felt excited about since she'd been back home, though, which she was regarding as a step in the right direction. "I'd quite like to pick your brains about it at some point, actually, if you've got time. Not here, though. Are you free at the weekend?"

 He nodded. "Should be, so long as nothing comes up between now and then."

 "Like an alien invasion, you mean? All right, then. Barring any invasions, meet me for lunch on Saturday," said Sarah. "And I'll tell you all about it."

  

~ end ~

 

 

 

 


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